It delighted her, too, to hear him talk of the notable occurrences taking place about them. “You are wonderfully intelligent, my dear,” he had said to her on one occasion, “and should miss nothing of the developments that are going on about us;” and in proof of it had the very next day taken her to an exhibition of Mr. Morse's new telegraph, given at the Institute, at which two operators, each with an instrument, the men in sight of each other, but too far apart to be in collusion, were sending and answering the messages through wires stretched around the hall. She, at Richard's suggestion, had written a message herself, which she handed to the nearest operator who had ticked it to his fellow, and who at once read it to the audience. Even then many doubting Thomases had cried out “Collusion,” until Richard, rising in his seat, had not only endorsed the truth of the reading, but explained the invention, his statement silencing all opposition because of his well-known standing and knowledge of kindred sciences. Richard's readings also, from which Kate was never absent, and which had now been resumed at his own house, greatly interested her. These of late had been devoted to many of Poe's earlier poems and later tales, for despite the scene at St. George's the inventor had never ceased to believe in the poet. And so with these occupations, studies, investigations, and social pleasures--she never missing a ball or party (Willits always managing to be with her)--and the spending of the summer months at the Red Sulphur, where she had been pursued by half a dozen admirers--one a titled Englishman--had the days and hours of the years of Harry's absence passed slowly away. At the end of the second winter a slight change occurred in the monotony of her life. Her constant, unwavering devotee, Langdon Willits, fell ill and had to be taken to the Eastern Shore, where the same old lot of bandages--that is of the same pattern--and the same loyal sister were impressed into service to nurse him back to health. The furrow Harry's bullet had ploughed in his head still troubled him at times, especially in the hot weather, and a horseback ride beside Kate one August day, with the heat in the nineties, had started the subsoil of his cranium to aching with such vehemence that Teackle had promptly packed it in ice and ten days later its owner in blankets and had put them both aboard the bay boat bound for the Eastern Shore.