“What is it, Dicky?” I entreated, wildly.  “Oh!  I know something terrible is the matter!”

He rose from his chair, and clasped my hands tightly.

“I suppose I’d better tell you quickly, dear,” he replied.  “Your cousin, Jack Bickett, is reported killed.”

“Killed!” I repeated faintly.  “Jack Bickett killed!  Oh, no, no, Dicky; no, no, no!”

I heard my own voice rise to a sort of shriek, felt Dicky release my hands and seize my shoulders, and then everything went black before me, and I knew nothing more.

When I came to myself, I was lying on the couch before the fire, with my face and the front of my gown dripping with water, the strong smell of hartshorn in the room, and Dicky with stern, white face, and Katie in tears, hovering over me.

Dicky was trying to force a spoon between my teeth when I opened my eyes.  He promptly dropped it, and the brandy it contained trickled down my neck.  I raised my hand to wipe it away, and Dicky uttered a low, “Thank God!”

“Oh, she no dead, she alive again!” Katie cried out, and threw herself on her knees by my side, sobbing.

“Get up, Katie, and stop that howling!” Dicky spoke sternly.  “Do you want to get my mother down here?  Go upstairs at once and prepare Mrs. Graham’s bed for her.  I will carry her up directly.  Are you all right now, Madge?”

His tone was anxious, but there was a note of constraint in it, which I understood even through the returning anguish at Dicky’s terrible news, which was possessing me with returning consciousness.

He believed that my feeling for my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, was a deeper one than that which I had always professed, a sisterly love for the only near relative I had in the world.  This was the reason for his sudden, passionate embrace of me when he entered the house, his demand that I tell him I loved him better than anybody in the world or out of it.

He had been jealous of Jack living, he would still be jealous of him dead!  But as the realization again swept over me that Jack, steadfast, manly Jack, the only near relative I had, was no longer in the same world with me, that never again would I see his kind eyes, hear his deep, earnest voice, all thoughts of anything else but my loss fled from me, and I gave a little moan.

I felt Dicky’s arm which was around my shoulders shrink away instinctively, then tighten again.  He turned my face against his shoulder, and, gathering me in his arms, lifted me from the couch.

“Oh, Dicky, I am sure I can walk,” I protested faintly.

He stopped and looked at me fixedly.

“Don’t you want my arms around you?” he asked, and there was that in his voice which made me answer hastily: 

“Of course I do, but I am afraid I am too heavy.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” he returned sternly, and forthwith carried me up the stairs, down the hall, and laid me on the bed in my own room.