"Put the necklet back into the dressing-case, mother," Salome repeated. "No one but you and I need ever know. Is it not odd I tremble so? I suppose I must lie quiet to-day."
They undressed her and put her to bed; and there, at twelve o'clock, her uncle found her--with her temperature very high, her head aching, and every sign of coming illness, of what nature Dr. Wilton could not then determine.
Salome's illness proved to be rheumatic fever. She was in great pain, and often delirious--wandering in thought to her old home and her childhood, and talking incessantly of the emerald necklet and money and debts, and the troubles which had by her brother's selfishness shadowed her young life, and weighed her down prematurely with the sorrows of older people.
Her mother understood but little of these feverish wanderings. But there was one in that house in whose ear his sister's voice rang with a pain which he never felt before.
Reginald was miserable and lonely. The little ones--whom in a bad day of restlessness and fever Dr. Wilton had hurried off in his carriage to Aunt Betha, who begged to be allowed to have them, saying she would be answerable they were in nobody's way--were continually asking when Salome would be well. Mrs. Wilton sat hour after hour in the sick room, almost paralyzed with the fear of losing this precious child. Stevens, dear faithful Stevens would go away to hide her grief when the moans of pain were more grievous, or when Salome would talk as if she were in the old nursery at Maplestone, and address Ada or her father as if present. All these tender and loving hearts were wrung with sorrow and distress; but Raymond's pain was far greater than any of these. Mrs. Atherton and her son were unable to reach him with a word of comfort. He went sullenly off to the office, and returned with a look of utter misery on his face every afternoon, only to hear the same report--"She is no better."
One Sunday morning he was up and dressed in time, and Reginald walked with him to church. The two brothers had been so much separated since early childhood that there was little sympathy between them. But this grief about Salome seemed to draw them together.
"How is your sister? How is the young lady?" Ruth asked, as they passed her door.