As she crossed the lawn at Jordan’s Journey, Uncle Abednego, the butler, appeared at the back door, and detained her with an excited wave of the hand.

“Lawd A’mighty, dar’s bad times yer, Miss Sary!” he cried, “Miss Angela she’s been mos’ dead fur goin’ on two hours, en we all’s done sont Cephus on de bay horse arter Marse Jonathan!”

CHAPTER XV

SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS

Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay in the saddle.  At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she answered the young man’s anxious questions with a manner which she tried to make as sympathetic as the occasion required.  This effort to adjust her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between mouth and chin.

“Am I in time?” he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out to her for support.

“The immediate danger is over, Jonathan,” she answered, while she led him into the library and closed the door softly behind them.  “For hours we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is no other shock, she may live on for months.”

“I got your note last night in Washington,” he returned.  “It was forwarded by mail from Applegate.  Is the doctor still with her?”

“No, he has just gone.  The rector is there now.  She finds him a great comfort.”

“It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah—­she appeared well when I left her.  What caused the attack?”

“A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne.  It seems he thought it best to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal of his property—­it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year, I believe, to Reuben Merryweather’s granddaughter when she comes of age.  Of course it wasn’t the money—­Angela never gave that a thought—­but the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so heavy a blow.”

“But surely she must have suspected—–­”

“She has never suspected anything in her life.  It is a part of her sweetness, you know, that she never faces an unpleasant fact until it is literally thrust on her notice.  As long as your uncle was so devoted to her and so considerate, she thought it a kind of disloyalty to inquire as to the rest of his life.  Once I remember, twenty years ago, when that poor distraught creature came to me—­I went straight to Angela and tried to get her to use her influence with her uncle for the girl’s sake.  But at the first hint, she locked herself in her room and refused to let me come near her.  Then it was that I had that terrible quarrel with Mr. Gay, and he hardly spoke to me again as long as he lived.  I believe, though, he would have married Janet after my talk with him except for Angela’s illness, which was brought on by the shock of hearing him speak