rt, either. I have my
opinion, and always shall. He cannot see Maude, and you may tell him
so,' turning now to the servant who had brought Harold's message, and
who softened it as much as possible.

Harold had half expected a refusal, and was prepared for it. Taking a
card from his pocket, he wrote upon it:

'DEAR MAUDE,--I am going away for a few weeks, and am very sorry
that I cannot see you; but your mother knows best, of course, and I
must not do anything to make you worse. I shall think of you very
often, and hope to find you much better when I return.

'HAROLD.'

'Will you give this to her?' he said to the girl, who answered that she
would, and who, of course, read every word before she took it to her
young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the family were at dinner,
and she was left in charge of the invalid.

'Mr. Hastings sent you this,' she said, handing the card to Maude, into
whose face the bright color rushed, but left it instantly as she read
the few hurried lines.

'Going away! Gone! and I didn't see him!' she exclaimed, regardless of
consequences. 'And mother did it. I know she did. I _will_ talk till I
spit blood; then see what she'll say!' she continued, as the frightened
girl tried to stop her, and as she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who
came in much alarm, asking what was the matter.

'You sent Harold away. You didn't let him see me, and he is--'

Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of coughing
which came on, together with a hemorrhage which made her so weak that
they thought her dying all night, she lay so white, and still, and
insensible, save at times when her lips moved, and her mother, bending
over her, heard her whisper:

'Send for Harold.'

But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and taken Harold
with it, away from the girl _he_ loved and from, the girls who loved him
so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few days after his departure, went
down very near to the gates of death, and whose first enquiry, when they
at last came back to life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he
stayed away.

CHAPTER XLIV.

JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.

The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little
town of Shannondale--the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by
Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast
turning against him since he could not explain where he found the
d