A note from Arthur!  How Edith trembled as she held it in her hand, and with a quick, furtive glance at sightless eyes beside her, she raised the dainty missive to her lips, feeling a reproachful pang as she reflected that she was breaking her vow to Richard.  Why had Arthur written to her—­she asked herself this question many times, while Richard, too, asked,

“What news from Florida?” ere she broke the seal and read, not words of changeless and dark despair, but words of entreaty that for the sake of Nina, sick, dying Nina, she would come at once to Florida, for so the crazy girl had willed it, pleading with them the live-long day to send for Miggie, precious Miggie, with the bright, black eyes, which looked her into subjection, and the soft hands which drove the ugly pain away.

“All the summer,” Arthur wrote, “she has been failing.  The heat seems to oppress her, and several times I’ve been on the point of returning with her to the North, thinking I made a mistake in bringing her here, but she refuses to leave Sunnybank.  Old sights and familiar places have a soothing effect upon her, and she is more as she used to be before the great calamity fell upon her.  Her disease is consumption, hereditary like her insanity, and as her physical powers diminish her mental faculties seem to increase.  The past is not wholly a blank to her now; she remembers distinctly much that has gone by, but of nothing does she talk so constantly as of Miggie, asking every hour if I’ve sent for you—­ how long before you’ll come; and if you’ll stay until she’s dead.  I think your coming will prolong her life; and you will never regret it, I am sure.  Mr. Russell will be your escort, as he will return in three weeks.”

To this note two postscripts were appended—­the first in a girlish, uneven hand, was redolent of the boy Arthur’s “Florida rose.”

“Miggie, precious Miggie—­come to Sunnybank; come to Nina.  She is waiting for you.  She wants you here—­wants to lay her poor, empty head, where the bad pain used to be, on your soft, nice bosom—­to shut her eyes and know it is your breath she feels—­your sweet, fragrant breath, and not Arthur’s, brim full of cigar smoke.  Do come, Miggie, won’t you?  There’s a heap of things I want to fix before I die, and I am dying, Miggie.  I see it in my hands, so poor and thin, not one bit like they used to be, and I see it, too, in Arthur’s actions.  Dear Arthur boy!  He is so good to me—­ carries me every morning to the window, and holds me in his lap while I look out into the garden where we used to play, you and I. I think it was you, but my brain gets so twisted, and I know the real Miggie is out under the magnolias, for it says so on the stone, but I can’t help thinking you are she.  Arthur has a new name for me, a real nice name, too.  He took it from a book, he says—­about just such a wee little girl as I am.  ‘Child-wife,’ that’s what he calls me, and he strokes my hair so nice.  I’m loving Arthur a heap, Miggie.