’You’ll come back?  You’ll stay all day?  You do me so much good, and I am a great deal better for your being here.’

Jerrie hesitated a moment; her head was aching so hard that she longed to get away.  But selfishness was not one of Jerrie’s faults, and putting her own wishes aside, she said: 

’Yes, I will stay until afternoon, and then I must go home.  I did not tell you that Harold was going away to-night, did I?’

Maude shook her head, and Jerry went on: 

’You know, perhaps, that some time ago a Mr. Wilson, of Truesdale, sued Peterkin for some infringement on a patent, or something of that sort.’

Maude nodded, and Jerrie continued: 

’The suit comes off to-morrow, and Harold is subpoenaed as a witness, as he was in Peterkin’s office a while and knows something about the arrangement between them.  I am sorry he has got to swear against Peterkin; it will make him so angry, and he hates Harold now.  The suit is to be called in the morning and Judge St. Claire and Harold are going to-night on the five o’clock train; and as he may be gone a day or two I must be home to see to packing his bag.  But I will stay with you just as long as I can.’

She said nothing of her head which throbbed in a most peculiar way, making her dizzy and half blind as she went down to breakfast, which she took alone with Mrs. Tracy.  Frank had eaten his long before, and was now pacing up and down the long piazza with his head bent forward and his hands locked together behind him.

’I shall never have rest or peace again until it is known.  Oh, if it would only come out without my telling,’ he said to himself, little dreaming how near it was to coming out and that before that day’s sun had set Jerrie would know!

Tom seldom appeared until after ten, and when Jerrie went for a few moments into the grounds, to see if the fresh air would do her good, she found him seated in an arm-chair under a horse chestnut tree, stretching himself and yawning as if he were just out of bed.

’Jerrie, you here?  Did you stay all night?  If I’d known that, I’d have made an effort to come down to breakfast, though I think getting up in the morning a bore.  Why, what’s the matter?  You look as if you were going to faint.  Sit down here,’ he continued, as he saw Jerrie reel forward as if she were about to fall.

He put her into the chair and stood over her, fanning her with his hat and wondering what he should do, while for a moment she lost consciousness of the things about her, and her mind went floating off after the picture on the wall in Wiesbaden, which was haunting her that morning.

When she came to herself, Tom and Dick and Billy were all three hovering around, and so close to her that without opening her eyes she could have told exactly where each one was standing, Tom by the smell of tobacco, with which his clothes were saturated, Billy by the powerful scent of white rose with which he always perfumed his handkerchief, and Dick, because, as she had once said to Nina when a child, he was so clean and looked as if he had just been scrubbed.  The two young men had come to enquire for Maude, and had found Jerrie half swooning under the tree, with Tom fanning her frantically and acting like a wild man.