Part 43 (1/2)

”Isn't Ida coming down?” whispered Stanton to his aunt.

”No. I can't make her out at all, and she looks dreadfully. You must go for a doctor, right after dinner.”

Van Berg could not hear their words, but their ominous looks added greatly to his disquietude. He had been too ill at ease to seek even Miss Burton's society during the morning, and had spent the time in making a sketch of Ida as she stood in the doorway before entering the parlor the previous evening.

But Jennie Burton did not seem to feel or resent his neglect in the slightest degree. Indeed, her thoughts, like his own, were apparently engrossed with the one whose chair had been vacant so often of late, and who, when present, seemed so unlike her former self.

”I fear you daughter is more seriously indisposed than you think,”

she said anxiously to Mrs. Mayhew.

”I'm going to take Ida in hand,” replied the matter-of-fact lady.

”She IS ill--far more so than she'll admit. I'm going to have the doctor at once and put her under a course of treatment.”

”Curse it all!” thought Van Berg, ”that is just the trouble. She has been under a course of treatment that would make any woman ill, save her mother, and I'm inclined to think that I was the veriest quack of them all in my treatment.”

”I wish she would let me call upon her this afternoon,” said Miss Burton, gently.

”Oh, I think she'll be glad to see you!--at least she ought to be;”

but it was too evident that Mrs. Mayhew was at last beginning to grow very anxious, and she made a simpler meal than usual. Stanton in his solicitude, hastened through dinner, and started at once for the physician who usually attended the guests of the house.

Ida, in the meantime, had forced herself to eat a little of the food sent to her, and then informing the woman who had charge of their floor that she was going out for a walk, stole down and out unperceived, and soon gained a secluded path that led into an extensive tract of woodland.

Stanton brought the doctor promptly, but no patient could be found.

All that could be learned was that ”Miss Mayhew had gone for a walk.”

”Her case cannot be very critical,” the physician remarked, smilingly; ”I will call again.”

Stanton and his aunt looked at each other in a way that proved the case was beginning to trouble them seriously.

”She knew the doctor would be here,” said Mrs. Mayhew.

”I fear her complaint is one that the doctors can't help, and that she knows it,” replied the young man, gloomily. ”But you seem to know less about her than any one else. I shall try to find her.”

But he did not succeed.

”Miss Burton,” said Van Berg, after dinner, ”I wish you would call on Miss Mayhew. I think she is greatly in need of a little of your inimitable tact and skill. 'A wounded spirit who can bear?' And in such an emergency, you are the best surgeon I know of. I think some of us wounded her deeply and unpardonably by continuing to a.s.sociate her with Sibley, after he revealed what an unmitigated rascal he was. Strong as appearances were against her, I feel that I cannot forgive myself that I took anything for granted in a case like that.”

”I am glad,” she answered, ”that you have come to my own conclusion, that Miss Mayhew, with all her faults, is too good a girl to be guilty of a pa.s.sion for a man like Sibley. If she regards him in any such way as I do, I do not wonder that it has made her ill to be so misjudged. I must plead guilty also to having wronged her in my thoughts. While I try to exercise the broadest charity, my calling, as a teacher, has brought me in contact with many girls that--through immaturity and innate foolishness--are guilty of conduct that taxes one's faith in human nature severely. Goodish sort of girls are sometimes infatuated with very bad men. I suppose it is evident to all that Miss Mayhew's early and, indeed, present influences are sadly against her; but unfortunate as have been her a.s.sociations of late, I am coming to the belief that, however faulty she may be, she is not naturally either silly or weak. But my acquaintance with her is very slight, and I must confess I do not understand her very well. For some reason she shuns me and has evidently disliked me from the first.”

”I don't understand her at all,” said Van Berg, in a tone that proved him greatly annoyed with himself. ”I have thought that I had sounded the shallow depths of her character several times, and then some new and perplexing phase would present itself, and put me all to sea again. It may seem ludicrous to you that her beauty should irritate me so greatly because of its incongruous a.s.sociations.”

”Not at all,” she replied, with a little nod. ”I was not long in discovering that you were a pagan, and that beauty was your divinity.”

”Correct in all respects save the divinity,” he answered promptly; and he would have said more, but she pa.s.sed into the parlor among the other guests.