Toward the middle of July, Helen, whose health was suffering from her restless anxiety concerning Mark, was taken by Mrs. Banker to Nahant, where Mark’s sister, Mrs. Ernst, was spending the summer, and thus on Katy alone fell the duty of paying to Morris those little acts of sisterly attentions such as no other member of the family knew how to pay.  In the room where he lay so helpless Katy was not afraid of him, nor did she deem herself faithless to Wilford’s memory, because each day found her at Linwood, sometimes bathing Morris’ inflamed eyes, sometimes bringing him the cooling drink, and again reading to him by the hour, until, soothed by the music of her voice, he would fall away to sleep and dream it was an angel there with him.

“My eyes are getting better,” he said to her one day toward the latter part of August, when she came as usual to his room.  “I knew last night that Mrs. Hull’s dress was blue, and I saw the sun shine through the shutters.  Soon, very soon, I hope to see you, Katy, and know if you have changed.”

She was standing close by him, and as he talked he raised his hand as if to rest it on her head, but, with a sudden movement, Katy eluded the touch, and stepped a little farther from him.

She did not go to Linwood the next day, nor the next; and when she went again there was in her manner a shade more of dignity, which had both amused and interested Morris.  He did not know for certain that Wilford had told Katy of the confession made that memorable night when her recovery seemed so doubtful, but he more than half suspected it from the shyness of her manner and from the various excuses she now made for not coming to Linwood every day, as she had heretofore done.

“You do not need me as much as you did,” she said to him one morning in September, when he complained of his loneliness, and told how he had waited for her the previous day until night shut down, and he knew she would not come.  “You can see better than you did.  You are able to sit up all day, and walk about a little, so if I come I am not needed,” and seating herself at a respectful distance from him, Katy folded her white hands demurely over her black dress, after having first adjusted the cap worn constantly since the time when she learned that Morris’ sight was improving.

“I sometimes think I need you more than I did then, and if you must stay away now, I am ungrateful enough to wish you had not come at all,” Morris replied, and Katy’s cheeks burned crimson as she felt that the dim eyes, seen through the green shades, were trying to study her as they had not studied her before.  “What is that on your head?” Morris asked, rather abruptly.  “I have tried to make it out, wondering if it were a handkerchief, and why it was worn.”

“It is my cap—­the widow’s cap—­worn for Wilford’s sake,” was the reply, which silenced Morris for that time, making him feel that between Katy Lennox, the girl, and Katy Cameron, the widow, there was a vast difference, and awakening in his heart a fear lest Wilford Cameron dead should prove as strong a rival as Wilford living had been.