read, and
every bell at the park house was muffled, and the servants spoke only in
whispers; while Frank Tracy sat day and night in the room where his
daughter lay, perfectly quiet, except as she sometimes put up her hand
to stroke his white hair or wipe away the tears constantly rolling down
his cheeks.

In Frank's heart there was a feeling worse than death itself, for keen
remorse and bitter regret were torturing his soul as he sat beside the
wreck of all his hopes and felt that he had sinned for naught. He knew
Maude would die, and then what mattered it to him if he had all the
money of the Rothschilds at his command?

'Oh, Gretchen, you are avenged, and Jerrie, too! Oh, Jerrie!' he said,
one day, unconsciously, as he sat by his daughter, who, he thought, was
sleeping. But at the mention of Jerrie's name her eyes unclosed and
fixed themselves upon her father with a look in which he read an earnest
desires for something.

'What is it, pet?' he asked. 'Do you want anything?'

They had made her understand that, she must not speak, for the slightest
effort to do so always brought on a fit of coughing which threatened a
hemorrhage, of which she could not endure many more. But they had
brought her a little slate, on which she sometimes wrote her requests,
though that, too, was an effort. Pointing now to the slate, she wrote,
while her father held it:

'I want Jerrie.'

'I thought so; and you shall have her for just as long as she will
stay,' Frank said; and a servant was dispatched to the cottage with the
message that Jerrie must come at once, and come prepared to pass the
night, if possible.

It had been very dreary for Maude during the time she had been shut up
in her room, to which no one was admitted except her father and mother,
the doctor, and the nurse. Many messages of enquiry and sympathy,
however, had come to her from the cottage, and Grassy Spring, and Le
Bateau, where Ann Eliza was still kept a prisoner with her sprained
ankle; and once Jerrie had written to Maude a note full of love and
solicitude and a desire to see her. As a postscript she added:

'Harold sends his love, and hopes you will soon be better. You don't
know how anxious he is about you. Why, I believe he has lost ten pounds
since your attack, for which he seems to blame himself, thinking he
excited you too much by talking to you.'

Maude listened to this note, which her father read to her, with a smile
on her face and tears on her lon