No one met them in the library, to which he conducted Una. Maud and
Edith were upstairs in close attendance upon Eliot. Carmontelle saw
that the girl was trembling with nervous excitement, and brought her a
sedative to drink.
"No one knows anything yet?" she asked him.
"No; and I am going to let you rest and recover yourself first, before
I bring Maud and Edith to you; and Eliot you shall see last of all."
He left her waiting there, and went upstairs to break the news to his
young wife and Edith. Eliot was still delirious, and carefully watched
by his attentive nurse. He beckoned the girls into another room, and
told them everything, then stood smiling at their tears of joy.
"Eliot will get well now with his wife come home to him," he said. "So
run down to the library like good girls now, and kiss your sister Una,
and break the news of Eliot's illness to her as gently as you can."
They needed no second bidding, but flew softly to the library, and
Una soon found herself in danger of being smothered in the energetic
clasp of four round white arms, while dual tears and kisses fell on her
golden head and lovely face.
Una was glad, more glad than words could tell, at this happy meeting,
but when the first joy was past, her dark eyes wandered eagerly toward
the door. The two sisters understood.
"You are looking for Eliot, dear," said Maud. "He can not come to you
now, dear. You see, the poor boy is sick--he has had such trouble over
losing you, Una--but now he will get well. You shall help us to nurse
him back to health."
And so, in gentle tones, they broke to her the news of Eliot's illness,
and presently carried her off with them to look at him where he lay,
with burning eyes and crimson face, among his pillows. But he did not
recognize the fair young wife who looked at him with eyes full of love
and grief, and pressed passionate lips on his hot brow. He only smiled
vacantly, and turning from her, began to talk in his restless delirium,
strange, disconnected, meaningless phrases that struck dismay to Una's
heart, and chilled the blood in her young veins.
"He will never get well; he will die, my love, my darling, my husband!"
she cried out, shrilly, in sudden terror and despair.
And Eliot turned his heavy head toward her, as if some chord of memory
had been struck by her voice, and began to babble of other things--of
the dark days of imprisonment in the cellar-room of the house on
Esplanade Street, of the beloved little companion who had shared
those horrors, and whose life he had saved by that desperate deed of
self-sacrifice.
She stood listening with dark, dilated eyes, hearing for the first time
how her life had been saved that night.
Carmontelle was standing close by her side.
She turned her dark, amazed, tear-wet eyes on his face, and murmured
hoarsely:
"Is it truth, or the ravings of fever and delirium?"
"It is truth," he answered; and, with a wild, remorseful cry, Una ran
out of the room.
He followed her into the next apartment. She had thrown herself into a
chair, and was sobbing wildly.
"Una, why do you take it so hard?" he expostulated. "Surely, no wife
could object to such devoted love!"
She looked up at him with agonized entreaty in her eyes.
"Was it love, or--pity?" she cried. "I--I thought--Sylvie Van Zandt
told me so--that he loved Ida Hayes before he ever met me, and would
have married her but for that--trouble--that forced him to make me his
wife."
"It was a fiendish falsehood!" declared Carmontelle, emphatically.
"Eliot never thought of Ida Hayes. He loved you from the first moment
he saw you."
"Ignorant Little Nobody as I was?" she exclaimed, in wonder.
"Yes; ignorant Little Nobody that you were!" he replied, smiling. "He
told me before he married you how glad he was that a strange fate had
given you to his keeping. You were destined for my bride, you know,
and Van Zandt, being poor, would not tell his love until that happy
accident gave you to his arms."
She exclaimed remorsefully:
"Oh, what a wretch I was to believe Sylvie and doubt my noble husband!
I thought, when I ran away, that he would get a divorce and marry Ida.
But he loved me all the time, my noble darling! Oh, if I had known
before that it was his precious life-current he gave me to drink,
that time when we both believed I was dying, all would have been so
different. I could not then have doubted his fidelity. No wonder I
could not keep from loving him all the time, when it was his own life
flowing in my veins and keeping me faithful to my husband."
"Do not blame yourself for doubting him; it was but natural, my dear,"
said her cousin. "Mrs. Bryant Van Zandt is the only one to blame. She
hated you because you spoiled her match-making. But now you will have
your revenge on that treacherous doll. You will be much richer than she
is, and can queen it over Sylvie and Ida in royal fashion."
She smiled through her tears, but answered:
"I do not care for the money, only to make dear Eliot rich. Oh, cousin,
do you think he will get well? Heaven would not be so cruel as to take
him from me now!"
"I trust, indeed, that he will be spared to us," Carmontelle answered,
evasively, for he was secretly alarmed at Eliot's condition.
But he would not communicate his fears to the alarmed wife and sisters,
only enjoined them to be careful and watchful over Eliot. Indeed,
he himself often shared the vigils of the nurse, who was a rather
old-looking man, and inclined to resent the aid he received from the
family, declaring that he could care for his patient better alone.
Una had taken a distaste to the nurse from the first, and her
unaccountable aversion increased as Eliot grew no better with the
lapse of days, and showed no sign of recognition of the dear ones who
surrounded him.
Carmontelle spoke to the doctor about the cross nurse, but he only
laughed, and said that nurses were always jealous of interference with
their patients, and that the man was splendid in his vocation; so Una
tried to dismiss her antipathy to him as unjust and unfounded.
But one night the physician declared that he saw a change in his
patient--a crisis was approaching, and he hoped the change would be for
the better. He left, promising to return at midnight, and enjoining
the utmost quiet and care in the sick-room, so that Eliot might not be
aroused from the deep slumber into which he had fallen.
When he had gone, Johnson, the nurse, declared that he must have the
sick-room alone with his patient.
"The crisis is all-important," he said. "When he awakens it will be
to life or death, and in spite of Doctor Pomeroy's flattering words,
I fear it will be death. When he wakes, I must be alone with him that
he may not be excited and frightened by your anxious faces. I hope you
will all go to your rooms and rest. I will call each one immediately
upon the slightest change in the patient."
They all promised, but Una's pledge was most reluctant. She looked
pleadingly at Johnson, and he returned her gaze sullenly, as it seemed
to her, through the goggle glasses he wore.
She went to her own room, just a little lower down the hall, and sat
down at the window, consumed with suspense and restlessness. The hours
passed slowly, drearily, and at last she could bear the torture of her
thoughts no longer.
"I will go to the room next to Eliot's and wait. No one will see or
hear me, and it can do no harm," she thought.
Wrapping a dark shawl about her shoulders, for the midnight hour was
chilly, Una glided like a spirit along the dark corridor until she
gained the little ante-chamber next to the sick-room. The outer door
was ajar, and also the one that opened into Eliot's room. The anxious
young wife moved softly across the soundless carpet and peered around
the door.
Then her shriek of terror, fear, and agony rang shrilly through the
house.