She gave utterance to a low, distressing wail, and rocked herself, murmuring some incoherent words.

“Olga, your mother has come, and unless you wish her to hear you, and come in, do try to compose yourself.”

Shuddering at the mention of her mother, she grew silent, moody, and suffered Regina to undress her.  After a long while, during which she appeared absolutely deaf to all appeals, she rose, smiled strangely, and threw herself across the bed; but the eyes were beginning to sparkle, and now and then she laughed almost hysterically.

When an hour had passed, and no sound came from the prostrate figure, Regina leaned over to look at her, and discovered that she was whispering rapidly some unintelligible words.

Once she startled up, exclaiming: 

“Don’t have such a hot fire!  My head is scorching.”

Regina watched her anxiously, softly stroking one of her hands, trying to soothe her to sleep; but after two o’clock, when she grew more restless and incoherent in her muttering, the young nurse felt assured she was sinking into delirium, and decided to consult Mrs. Palma.

Concealing the shawl and bonnet, and gathering up the most conspicuous fragments of glass on the hearth, she put them out of sight, and hurried to Mrs. Palma’s room.

She was astonished to find her still awake, sitting before a table, and holding a note in her hand.

“What is the matter, Regina?”

“Olga has come home, and I fear she is very ill.  Certainly she is delirious.”

“Oh! then she has heard it already!  She must have seen the paper.  I knew nothing of it until to-night, when Erle’s hasty note from Philadelphia reached me, after I left the opera.  I dreaded the effect upon my poor, unfortunate child.  Where is she?”

“In my room.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

During the protracted illness that ensued, Olga temporarily lost the pressure of the burden she had borne for so many years, and entered into that Eden which her imagination had painted, ere the sudden crash and demolition of her Chateaux en Espagne.  Her delirium was never violent and raving, but took the subdued form of a beatified existence.  In a low voice, that was almost a whisper, she babbled ceaselessly of her supreme satisfaction in gaining the goal of all her hopes—­and dwelt upon the beauty of her chalet home—­the tinkling music of the bells on distant heights where cattle browsed—­the leaping of mountain torrents just beyond her window—­the cooing of the pigeons upon the tall peaked roof—­the breath of mignonette and violets stealing through the open door.  When pounded ice was laid upon her head, an avalanche was sliding down, and the snow saluted her in passing; and when the physician ordered more light admitted that he might examine the unnaturally glowing eyes, she complained that the sun was setting upon the glacier and the blaze blinded her.  Now she sat on a mossy knoll beside Belmont, reading aloud Buchanan’s “Pan” and “The Siren,” while he sketched the ghyll; and anon she paused in her recitation of favourite passages to watch the colour deepen on the canvas.