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her hand, she understood; understood what Georgy had offered to share with her, what the taciturn secretiveness of Celeste meant. She went in through the parlour to her mother's room, from which of late she had been so much shut out. "Molly," she said, her voice sounding strange to herself, as she held out the paper open. Molly, risen on her pillow, looked at it, at her, her eyes growing big. She was frightened, and cowered a little, crumpling some letters in her lap. "Don't look at me like that, Malise," she said. "I've some of the money you gave me left--I'll help to pay it." That she was afraid only because of the bill! "Oh--" Alexina breathed it rather than uttered it. Molly, risen from her elbow to sitting posture, was looking at her with big, miserable eyes, her throat, so slight and pretty, swelling with the sobs coming. But the other came first, and with it came the terror. "Malise, Malise, hold me; hold me. I'm afraid!" Celeste was out. Alexina, holding her mother, could reach the bell, and rang it, again and again. "Oh," she said to the boy when he came; "get a doctor." "What one?" he asked. Alexina remembered Dr. Ransome. Then she sat and fed ice to Molly and tried to keep her still. It is a fearful thing to feel the close, clinging touch of a person we are shrinking from. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon. The clock on the parlour mantel ticked with maddening reiteration. It seemed hours before Dr. Ransome came. Then a moment later Celeste returned. Molly flung her arms out to the old woman. "He's dead, mammy," she wailed; "Jean's dead; the letters came after you went--and I'm afraid, I'm afraid of it, I'm afraid to die!" It was to Celeste Molly had to tell it. The daughter listened with a sudden resentment towards Celeste. Molly was not going to be better right at once, and Alexina and Dr. Garrard Ransome had many opportunities for talk. She stopped him in the parlour, as he was going, one morning. It had been on her mind for a long time to ask him something. "It's odd, your name being Ransome," she said. "Mrs. Leroy, who used to live where you do, had been a Miss Ransome." "She's my cousin Charlotte," said the young fellow; "that's how my mother came to fancy living where we do, when we came down from Woodford to Louisville. She used to visit the Leroys there you see." "Oh," said Alexina, "really? They were very good to me." The blue eyes of the doctor were regardi
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