It had been very dreary for Maude during the time she had been shut up in her room, to which no one was admitted except her father and mother, the doctor, and the nurse.  Many messages of enquiry and sympathy, however, had come to her from the cottage, and Grassy Spring, and Le Bateau, where Ann Eliza was still kept a prisoner with her sprained ankle; and once Jerrie had written to Maude a note full of love and solicitude and a desire to see her.  As a postscript she added: 

’Harold sends his love, and hopes you will soon be better.  You don’t know how anxious he is about you.  Why, I believe he has lost ten pounds since your attack, for which he seems to blame himself, thinking he excited you too much by talking to you.’

Maude listened to this note, which her father read to her, with a smile on her face and tears on her long eyelashes; but when he came to the postscript she laughed aloud, as a little child laughs at the return of its mother, for whom it has been hungering.  This was the first word she had had from him, except that he had called to enquire for her, and she had so longed for something which should assure her that he remembered her even as she did him.  She had no distrust of him, and would as soon have doubted that the sun would rise again as to have doubted his sincerity; but she wanted to hear again that he loved her, and now she had heard it, and, folding her hands upon her breast, she fell into the most, refreshing sleep she had had since her illness.  Could Maude have talked and seen people, or if she had been less anxious to live, she would probably have told Jerrie and Nina, and possibly Ann Eliza Peterkin, of what had passed between herself and Harold, but she had not seen them; while life, with Harold to love her, looked so bright and sweet, that if by keeping silence she could prolong it, she would do so for months, if necessary.  To live for Harold was all she wished or thought about; and often when they hoped she was sleeping, she lay so still, with her eyes closed and her arms folded upon her breast, just as if she were praying in her dreams, her father thought.  She was praying for life and length of days, with strength to make Harold as happy as he ought to be, and was thinking of and planning all she meant to do for him when once they were married.  First to Europe, where she would be so proud to show him the places she had seen, and where Jerrie would be with them, for in all her plans Jerrie had almost as prominent a place as herself.

‘I am nothing without Jerrie,’ she thought ’She keeps me up, and Jerrie will live with us, and Mrs. Crawford; that makes four, just enough for a nice game of whist in long winter evenings, when it is so cold outside but warm and bright within—­always bright for Harold, whose life has been so full of care and toil.  Poor boy! how I pitied his great warm hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could have kissed every seam and scar upon it.