It was quite gone; and she rose up and sadly re-entered the house.

“I don’t pity her at all,” she heard her grandfather say, “for it is all her own fault, and serves her just right.”

But so utterly crushed and heart-broken was she already, that the cruel words fell quite unheeded upon her ear.

She went directly to her father’s deserted room, and shutting herself in, tottered to the bed, and laying her face on the pillow where his head had rested a few hours before, clasped her arms around it, and wetted it with her tears, moaning sadly to herself the while, “Oh, papa, my own dear, darling papa!  I shall never, never see you again!  Oh, how can I live without you? who is there to love me now?  Oh, papa, papa, will you never, never come back to me?  Papa, papa, my heart is breaking!  I shall die.”

From that time the little Elsie drooped and pined, growing paler and thinner day by day—­her step more languid, and her eye more dim—­till no one could have recognized in her the bright, rosy, joyous child, full of health and happiness, that she had been six months before.  She went about the house like a shadow, scarcely ever speaking or being spoken to.  She made no complaint, and seldom shed tears now; but seemed to have lost her interest in everything and to be sinking into a kind of apathy.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Dinsmore one day, as Elsie passed out into the garden, “that Horace had sent that child to boarding-school, and stayed at home himself.  Your father says he needs him, and as to her—­she has grown so melancholy of late, it is enough to give one the vapors just to look at her.”

“I am beginning to feel troubled about her,” replied Adelaide, to whom the remark had been addressed; “she seems to be losing flesh, and strength, too, so fast.  The other day I went into her room, and found Fanny crying heartily over a dress of Elsie’s which she was altering.  ‘Oh!  Miss Adelaide,’ she sobbed, ‘the chile gwine die for sartain!’ ’Why no, Fanny,’ I said, ‘what makes you think so? she is not sick.’  But she shook her head, saying, ‘Just look a here, Miss Adelaide,’ showing me how much she was obliged to take the dress in to make it fit, and then she told me Elsie had grown so weak that the least exertion overcame her.  I think I must write to Horace.”

“Oh, nonsense, Adelaide!” said her mother, “I wouldn’t trouble him about it.  Children are very apt to grow thin and languid during the hot weather, and I suppose fretting after him makes it affect her rather more than usual; and just now in the holidays she has nothing else to occupy her thoughts.  She will do well enough.”

So Adelaide’s fears were relieved, and she delayed writing, thinking that her mother surely knew best.

Mrs. Travilla sat in her cool, shady parlor, quietly knitting.  She was alone, but the glance she occasionally sent from the window seemed to say that she was expecting some one.