Burton, I'll
kill myself! No, I didn't mean to say that. But I'll never speak to you
again. Now you won't really, will you?"

"No, I won't, Nelie, if you don't want me to; but I don't see why----
Why, bless the child!"

Mrs. Burton sprang forward and caught the girl, who was reeling as if
she were going to fall. "Katy! Katy! Bring some water here, quick!"

When they had laid Cornelia on a sofa and restored her from her faint,
Mrs. Burton would not let her try to rise. She sent out to Burton, who
was reading a novel in the mild forenoon air under the crimson maples,
and made him get the carryall and take Cornelia home in it. They
thought they would pretend that they were out for a drive, and were
merely dropping her at her mother's door; but no ruse was necessary.
Mrs. Saunders tranquilly faced the fact; she said she thought the child
hadn't been herself since she got back from her school, and she guessed
she had better have the doctor now.

VII.

It was toward the end of January before Cornelia was well enough to be
about in the old way, after her typhoid fever. Once she was so low that
the rumor of her death went out; but when this proved false it was
known for a good sign, and no woman, at least, was surprised when she
began to get well. She was delirious part of the time, and then she
raved constantly about Ludlow, and going to New York to study art. It
was a mere superficial effect from her talk with Mrs. Burton just
before she was taken down with the fever; but it was pathetic, all the
same, to hear her pleading with him, quarrelling, protesting that she
was strong enough, and that she was not afraid but that she should get
through all right if he would only tell her how to begin. "Now you just
tell me that, tell me that, tell me that! It's the _place_ that I can't
find. If I can get to the right door! But it won't open! It won't open!
Oh, dear! What _shall_ I do!"

Mrs. Burton, who heard this go on through the solemn hours of night,
thought that if Ludlow could only hear it he would be careful how he
ever discouraged any human being again. It was as much as her husband
could do to keep her from writing to him, and making the girl's fever a
matter of personal reproach to him; but she refrained, and when
Cornelia got up from it she was so changed that Mrs. Burton was glad
she had never tried to involve any one else in her anxieties about her.

Not only the fever had burned itself out, but Cornelia's