Ethie stood over him until the glimmer of the watchman’s lamp passed down the hall a second time, and disappeared around the corner.  The watchman had stopped at Richard’s door to listen, and then Ethie had experienced a spasm of terror at the possibility of being discovered; but with the receding footsteps her fears left her, and she waited a half-hour longer, while Richard in his dreams talked of bygone days—­speaking of Olney, and then of Daisy and herself.  Dead, both of them, he seemed to think; and Ethie’s pulse throbbed with a strange feeling of joy as she heard herself called his poor darling, whom he wanted back again.  She was satisfied now.  He had not forgotten her, or even thought to separate himself from her, as Aunt Van Buren hinted.  He was true to her yet, and she had acted foolishly in keeping aloof from him so long.  But she would be foolish no longer.  To-morrow he should know everything.  If he would only awaken she would tell him now, and take the consequences.  But Richard did not waken, and at last, with a noiseless step, she glided back to her own chamber.  She would write to Richard, she decided.  She could talk to him better on paper, and, then, if he did not care to receive her, they would both be spared much embarrassment.

Ethie’s door was locked all the next morning, for she was writing to her husband a long, humble letter, in which all the blame was taken upon herself, inasmuch as she had made the great mistake of marrying without love.  “But I do love you now, Richard,” she said; “love you truly, too, else I should never be writing this to you, and asking you to take me back and try if I cannot make you happy.”

It was a good deal for Ethie to confess that she had been so much in fault; but she did it honestly, and when the letter was finished she felt as if all that had been wrong and bitter in the past was swept away, and a new era in her life had begun.  She would wait till night, she said—­wait till all was again quiet in the hall and in the sick-room, and then when the boy came around with the mail, as he was sure to do, she would hand her letter to him, and bid him leave it in Governor Markham’s room.  The rest she could not picture to herself; but she waited impatiently for the long August day to draw to its close, joining the guests in the parlor by way of passing the time, and appearing so bright and gay that those who had thought her proud and cold, and reticent, wondered at the brightness of her face and the glad, eager expression of her eyes.  She was pretty, after all, they thought, and even Miss Owens, from New York, tried to be very gracious, speaking to her of Governor Markham, whose room adjoined hers, and asking if she had seen him.  About him Ethie did not care to talk, and, making some excuse to get away, left the room without hearing a whisper of the story which was going the rounds of the Cure, and which Miss Owens was rather desirous of communicating to someone who, like herself, would be likely to believe it a falsehood.