"I will not have it. Tell Waveney that I forbid her to come near the house. Good heavens! would she add to my troubles? Is it not enough to have one child ill?" Then his eyes filled with tears, and the hand he put on Althea's arm shook a little. "Dear Miss Harford, be my friend in this; keep Waveney safe for me." And something in his tone told Althea that, dearly as Everard loved all his children, this was the one who came closest to his heart.
"Do not fear," she returned, tenderly. "You can trust me, and Waveney loves you far too well to disobey you; but"--here she sighed--"it will certainly break her heart. Mollie is her other and her dearer self."
"Yes, poor darling, I know that; but she must be brave. Tell her, from me, please, that I will write twice a day if that will comfort her. She shall know everything. There shall be nothing hidden from her."
"Yes, I will tell her," returned Althea, sorrowfully. "And when my cousin returns, we will arrange about Noel; he must not stop here." Then there was an unmistakable look of gratitude in Everard's eyes.
"You think of everything," he said, in a broken voice. "I was troubling sadly about the poor lad. Now I am afraid I must leave you, as Mollie has no other nurse." But he was both touched and surprised when Althea rose, too.
"Let me go with you," she said, quickly; "I am not the least afraid. I had the complaint very badly myself before we left Kitlands."
"I fear we are both doing wrong," returned Everard, hesitating. "Your sister will be very angry with you." But Althea shook her head very decidedly at this, and he was too bewildered and miserable to argue the point.
The sick room looked bare and comfortless to Althea's eyes, in spite of the bright fire burning cheerily in the grate. The big iron bedstead, with its old and obviously patched quilt; the dark stained wood furniture, and the narrow window seats, with faded red cushions, were hardly a fit shrine for Mollie's dainty beauty. Mollie lay uncomfortably on her pillows; she looked flushed and ill, and her beautiful eyes had a heavy, distressed look in them. She held out her hands rather eagerly to Althea, but the next moment she drew them back.
"Oh, I forgot," she said, in a thick voice; and it was evidently a great effort to speak. "You must not come near me: Dr. Duncan said so. Tell my darling Wave that she must keep away if she loves me, and ask her not to fret. Oh, I cannot talk;" and here poor Mollie flung herself back on the pillows, and her hot, restless fingers tried to put back the heavy masses of rough tangled hair.