Miss Owens had sent a pretty vase with hers, but Ethie’s was simply tied with a bit of ribbon she had worn about her neck.  And Richard took it in his hand, an exclamation escaping him as he saw and smelled the fragrant pinks, whose perfume carried him first to Olney and Andy’s weedy beds in the front yard, and then to Chicopee, where in Aunt Barbara’s pretty garden, a large plant of them had been growing when he went after his bride.  A high wind had blown them down upon the walk, and he had come upon Ethie one day trying to tie them up.  He had plucked a few, he remembered, telling Ethie they were his favorites for perfume, while the red peony was his favorite for beauty.  There had been a comical gleam in her brown eyes which he now knew was born of contempt for his taste with regard to flowers.  Red peonies were not the rarest of blossoms—­Melinda had taught him that when he suggested having them in his conservatory; but surely no one could object to these waxen, feathery pinks, whose odor was so delicious.  Miss Bigelow liked them, else she had never sent them to him.  And he kept the bouquet in his hand, admiring its arrangement, inhaling the sweet perfume of the delicate pinks and heliotrope, and speculating upon the kind of person Miss Bigelow must be to have thought so much of him.  He could account for Miss Owens’ gift—­the hot-house blossoms, which had not moved him one-half so much as did this bunch of pinks.  She had known him before—­had met him in Washington; he had been polite to her on one or two occasions, and it was natural that she should wish to be civil, at least while he was sick.  But the lady in No. 101—­the Miss Bigelow for whom he had discarded his boots and trodden on tiptoe half the time since his arrival—­why she should care for him he could not guess; and finally deciding that it was a part of Clifton, where everybody was so kind, he put the bouquet in the tumbler Mary had brought and placed it on the stand beside him.  He was very restless that night, and Ethie heard the watchman at his door twice asking if he wanted anything.

“Nothing,” was the reply, and the voice, heard distinctly in the stillness of the night, was so faint and sad that Ethie hid her face in her pillow and sobbed bitterly, while the intense longing to see him grew so strong within her that by morning the resolution was taken to risk everything for the sake of looking upon him again.

He did not require an attendant at night—­he preferred being alone, she had ascertained; and she knew that his door was constantly left open for the admission of fresh air.  The watchman only came into the hall once an hour or thereabouts, and while Richard slept it would be comparatively easy for her to steal into his room.  Fortune seemed to favor her, for when at nine the doctor, as usual, came up to pay his round visits, she heard him say, “I will leave you something which never fails to make one sleep,” and after two hours had passed she