to know
whether he was complimented or not, and who eventually took to studying
Shakspere to find out who Bottom was. Those were trying days to Richard,
who rarely left Ethie's bedside, except when it was absolutely
necessary. She was more quiet with him, and would sometimes sleep for
hours upon his arm, with one hand clasped in Aunt Barbara's, and the
other held by Andy. At other times, when the fever was on, no arm
availed to hold her as she tossed from side to side, talking of things
at which a stranger would have marveled, and which made Richard's heart
ache to its very core. At times she was a girl in Chicopee, and all the
past as connected with Frank Van Buren was lived over again; then she
would talk of Richard, and shudder as she recalled the dreary, dreadful
day when the honeysuckles were in blossom, and he came to make her
his wife.

"It was wrong, all wrong. I did not love him then," she said, "nor
afterward, on the prairie, nor anywhere, until I went away, and found
what it was to live without him."

"And do you love him now?" Richard asked her once when he sat alone with
her.

There was no hesitancy on her part, no waiting to make up an answer. It
was ready on her lips, "Yes, oh, yes!" and the weak arms lifted
themselves up and were wound around his neck with a pressure almost
stifling. How much of this was real Richard could not tell, but he
accepted it as such, and waited impatiently for the day when the full
light of reason should return and Ethie be restored to him. There was
but little of her past life which he did not learn from her ravings, and
so there was less for her to tell him when at last the fever abated, and
his eyes met hers with a knowing, rational expression. Andy was alone
with her when the change first came. The rain, which had fallen so
steadily, was over, and out upon the river the sunlight was softly
falling. At Andy's earnest entreaty, Richard had gone for a little
exercise in the open air, and was walking slowly up and down the broad
piazza, while Aunt Barbara slept, and Andy kept his vigils by Ethelyn.
She, too, was sleeping quietly, and Andy saw the great drops of
perspiration standing upon her brow and beneath her hair. He knew it was
a good omen, and on his knees by the bedside, with his face in his
hands, he prayed aloud, thanking God for restoring Ethelyn to them, and
asking that they might all be taught just how to make her happy. A faint
sound between a moan and a sob ro