Franklin could scarcely wait till they walked to the carriage. He wished to carry—to drag Caroline away. He shifted his position continually, without apparent cause; at last shook hands with his companions, saying he would follow the carriage, as he wanted air and exercise.
They soon arrived home, where Caroline, in a high state of excitement, was ordered to bed by a physician; but, after soothing medicines had calmed certain hysterical symptoms, she fell into a deep sleep, which the doctor said was worth more than all the apothecaries could compound. In fact, she did not wake till late next morning, and in a day or two was comparatively restored.
But poor Franklin had gone home in a raging fever, which increased during the night to delirium. His ravings were of magistrates, the jeering crowd, dungeons, chains, and the convict-ship. Then he was at the penal settlement. He heard the frightful oaths, obscene jests, and blasphemous laughter of the convicts. Among them he beheld Caroline Clifford—haggard, and in rags—now toiling at her task, now shrieking beneath the bloody lash—and he seemed to grasp the throat of Jennings, and implored him to stay his hellish hand.
More than a month passed before he was sufficiently recovered to leave his room. Every day Mrs. Clifford had visited him, and watched over him with a mother's love. Every day the carriage of Mr. Blake brought the old gentleman to the bed-side of the poor invalid, where he listened to the ravings of his disturbed imagination, and shuddered to think of what horrors—but for a providential coincidence—he might have added to the history of human wo.
At length Mr. Franklin was allowed to take a drive. It is scarcely necessary to say that he called on the ladies. Mrs. Clifford, previously apprized of his intended visit, at the sound of the bell, accidentally remembered that she had left her scissors up stairs. So Franklin found Caroline alone.
"You are very, very pale," cried the greatly agitated girl, her eyes filling with good, honest tears, as she gave him her hand.
He raised it to his lips.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Clifford."
But, like Beatrice, she seemed to hold it there again with a fervor which even the modest Franklin could not wholly misunderstand.
"I owe you more than my life," cried Caroline, with such a look as she had never bestowed upon him before.