'Why?' she managed to say.
'Because you have been so ill! Don't you know? Don't you recollect?'
'Yes—I know, a little,' she said. 'Where is Jack Huysen?'
'He is here in the hotel too. Oh, how glad they will all be to hear that you are quite yourself again. And I must go and tell them, as soon as nurse comes; for, you know, you'll have a long pull before you, Carry; and if you don't get quite well again not one of us will ever forgive ourselves for bringing you to Lake George. And there's Jack Huysen, poor fellow, he has just been distracted; and all the time you were ill you never had a word for him—though he used to haunt the passage outside just like a ghost—well, well, you'll have to make it up to him.'
At this moment the nurse appeared, and Miss Kerfoot was free to depart on her joyful errand. Of course, she was for summoning everybody—and Jack Huysen among the rest; but the doctors interposed; their patient must be kept perfectly quiet; in the meantime no one but her father was to have access to her room.
Now Mr. Hodson, when he was seated there by her side, and chatting lightly and carelessly about a variety of indifferent matters (she herself being forbidden to speak), considered that he could not do better than relieve her mind of any anxiety she may have entertained on Ronald's account. All through her delirium that was the one thing that seemed to trouble her; and, lest she should revert to it, he thought he might as well give her ample assurance that Ronald should be looked after. However, to his great surprise, he found that she was quite ignorant of her having made these appeals on behalf of Ronald. She did not seem to know that she had been in dire distress about him, reproaching herself for their treatment of him, and begging her father to make such atonement as was yet possible. No; when she was allowed to speak a little, she said quite calmly that it was a pity they had not been able to go to Scotland that autumn; that they should have written to Ronald to see how he was getting on; and that her father, if he visited the old country, in the coming spring, ought surely to seek him out, and remind him that he had some friends in America who would be glad to hear of his welfare. But Mr. Hodson said to himself that he would do a little more than that. He was not going to recall the promise that he had made to his daughter when, as he thought, she lay near to the very gates of death. What had put that pathetic solicitude into her mind he knew not; but she had made her appeal, with dumb fever-stricken eyes and trembling voice; and he had answered her and pledged his word. Ronald should be none the loser that this sick girl had thought of him when that she seemed to be vanishing away from them for ever; surely in that direction, as well as any other, the father might fitly give his thank-offering—for the restitution to life of the sole daughter of his house?
CHAPTER XIII.
IN ABSENCE.
Loch Naver lay calm and still under the slow awakening of the dawn. All along the eastern horizon the low-lying hills were of a velvet-textured olive-green—a mysterious shadow-land where no detail was visible; but overhead the skies were turning to a clear and luminous gray; the roseate tinge was leaving the upper slopes of Ben Loyal and Ben Clebrig; and the glassy surface of the lake was gradually whitening as the red-golden light changed to silver and broadened up and through the wide sleeping world. An intense silence lay over the little hamlet among the trees; not even a dog was stirring; but a tiny column of pale blue smoke issuing from one of the chimneys told that some one was awake within—probably the yellow-haired Nelly, whose duties began at an early hour.
And what was Meenie—or Rose Meenie, or Love Meenie, as she might be called now, after having all those things written about her—what was she doing awake and up at such a time? At all events, her morning greeting was there confronting her. She had brought it and put it on the little dressing-table; and as she brushed out her beautiful abundant brown tresses, her eyes went back again and again to the pencilled lines, and she seemed not ill-pleased. For this was what she read: