‘Will you give this to her?’ he said to the girl, who answered that she would, and who, of course, read every word before she took it to her young mistress, late in the afternoon, while the family were at dinner, and she was left in charge of the invalid.

‘Mr. Hastings sent you this,’ she said, handing the card to Maude, into whose face the bright color rushed, but left it instantly as she read the few hurried lines.

‘Going away!  Gone! and I didn’t see him!’ she exclaimed, regardless of consequences.  ’And mother did it.  I know she did.  I will talk till I spit blood; then see what she’ll say!’ she continued, as the frightened girl tried to stop her, and as she could not, ran for Mrs. Tracy, who came in much alarm, asking what was the matter.

‘You sent Harold away.  You didn’t let him see me, and he is—­’

Maude gasped, but could get no farther, for the paroxysm of coughing which came on, together with a hemorrhage which made her so weak that they thought her dying all night, she lay so white, and still, and insensible, save at times when her lips moved, and her mother, bending over her, heard her whisper: 

‘Send for Harold.’

But it was too late now; the train had come and gone, and taken Harold with it, away from the girl he loved and from, the girls who loved him so devotedly, and both of whom, for a few days after his departure, went down very near to the gates of death, and whose first enquiry, when they at last came back to life and consciousness, was for Harold and why he stayed away.

CHAPTER XLIV.

JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.

The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little town of Shannondale—­the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast turning against him since he could not explain where he found the diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and Jerrie Crawford were at the point of death, which made Harold’s sudden departure all the more heinous in the eyes of his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could have prompted him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for him with every breath, and charging him with having taken the diamonds?  Now, this was false; for although Jerrie’s fever had increased rapidly during the night, and her babbling was something terrible to hear, there was in it no accusation of Harold, although she was constantly talking to him, and asking for the diamonds and the bag.