“What is the matter?”

“The doctor said he must have been fearfully run down, and he was out in the storm and caught a cold; and he’s been in a very bad way, delirious and unconscious by turns for two or three days.”

Helen was staring at the servant in a dumb fright.  “Tell me, Elizabeth,” she cried, scarcely able to say the words, “he is not dangerously ill?”

“The danger is over now,” the other answered, “so the doctor said, or else Mr. Davis would never have left; but he’s in a bad way and it may be some time before he’s up again.”

Perhaps it was the girl’s overwrought condition that made her more easily alarmed just then, for she was trembling all over as she heard those words.  She had forgotten Arthur almost entirely during the past two days, and he came back to her at that moment as another thorn in her conscience.

“Mr. Davis said he wrote you to go and see him,” went on the servant; “shall you, Miss Helen?”

“I—­I don’t know,” said Helen faintly, “I’ll see.”

As a matter of fact, she knew that she almost certainly would not go to see Arthur after what had just passed; even to have him find out about it was something of which she simply could not think.  She felt dread enough at having to tell her father of what had occurred with Mr. Harrison, and to see Arthur, even though he did not know about it, she knew was not in her power.

“Perhaps I ought not to have told you about it until after you had had your lunch; you are not eating anything, Miss Helen.”

“I don’t want anything,” said Helen, mournfully; “take it now, please, Elizabeth, and please do not trouble me any more.  I have a great deal to worry me.”

When the woman had left the room, Helen shut the door and then sat down on a chair, staring blankly before her; there was a mirror just across the room, and her own image caught her eye, startling her by its pale and haggard look.

“Dear me, it’s dreadful!” she cried aloud, springing up.  “Why did I let people trouble me in this way?  I can’t help Arthur, and I couldn’t have helped him in the beginning.  It’s every bit of it his own fault, and I don’t see why I should let it make me ill.  And it’s the same with the other thing; I could have been happy without all that wealth if I’d never seen it, and now I know I’ll never be happy again,—­oh, I know it!”

And Helen began once more pacing up and down.

“I never was this way before in my life,” she cried with increasing vexation, “and I won’t have it!”

She clenched her hands angrily, struggling within herself to shake off what was tormenting her.  But she might as well have tried to shake off a mountain from her shoulders; hers had been none of the stern experience that gives power and command to the character, and of the kind of energy that she needed she had none, and not even a thought of it.  She tried only to forget her troubles in some of her old pleasures,