the parlor
or on the long piazza after the eight-o'clock mail had arrived, and so
she seldom heeded it; but to-night there was a difference, and she
watched the long line curiously until it passed the corner by the old
brown farmhouse and disappeared from view. It had left the station long
ere she reached the Cure, for she had walked slowly, and lights were
shining from the different rooms, and there was a sound of singing in
the parlor, and the party of croquet players had come up from the lawn,
and ladies were hurrying toward the bathroom, when she came in and
climbed the three flights of stairs which led to the fourth floor. There
was a light shining through the ventilator of No. 102, the door was
partly ajar, and the doctor was there, asking some questions of the tall
figure, whose outline Ethelyn dimly descried as she went into her room.
There was more talking after a little--more going in and out, while Mary
Ann brought up some supper on a tray, and John brought up a traveling
trunk much larger than himself, and then, without Mrs. Pry's assurance,
Ethie knew that the occupant of No. 102 had arrived.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE OCCUPANT OF NO. 102

He did not cough, but he seemed to be a restless spirit, for Ethie heard
him pacing up and down his room long after the gas was turned off and
her own candle was extinguished. Once, too, she heard a long-drawn sigh,
or groan, which made her start suddenly, for something in the tone
carried her to Olney and the house on the prairie. It was late that
night ere she slept, and when next morning she awoke, the nervous
headache, which had threatened her the previous night, was upon her in
full force, and kept her for nearly the entire day confined to her bed.
Mrs. Pry was spending the day in Phelps, and with this source of
information cut off, Ethelyn heard nothing of No. 102, further than the
chambermaid's casual remark that "the gentleman was quite an invalid,
and for the present was to take his meals and baths in his room to avoid
so much going up and down stairs."

Who he was Ethelyn did not know or care, though twice she awoke from a
feverish sleep with the impression that she had heard Richard speaking
to her; but it was only Jim, the bath man, talking in the next room, and
she laid her throbbing head again upon her pillow, while her new
neighbor dreamed in turn of her and woke with the strange fancy that she
was near him. Ethie's head was better that night; so much be