The eyes of both turned again upon Marguerite, who was now standing still in her place waiting for the next quadrille to be called. While they thus contemplated her in all her splendid beauty, set off by a toilet the most elegant in the room, Marguerite suddenly gave a violent start, shivered through all her frame and bent anxiously to listen to something that was passing between two gentlemen, who were conversing in a low tone, near her. She grew paler and paler as she listened, and then with a stifled shriek, she fell to the floor, ere any one could spring to save her. Cornelia flew to her friend’s relief. She was already raised in the arms of Colonel Randolph, and surrounded by ladies anxiously proffering vinaigrettes and fans, while their partners rushed after glasses of water. “Bring her into the dressing-room, at once, Randolph,” said Colonel Compton, as he joined the group. Accordingly Miss De Lancie was conveyed thither, and laid upon a lounge, where every restorative at hand was used in succession, and in vain. More than an hour passed, while she lay in that deathlike swoon; and when at last the efforts of an experienced physician were crowned with thus much success, that she opened her dimmed eyes and unclosed her blanched lips, it was only to utter one word--“Lost”--and to relapse into insensibility. She was put into the carriage and conveyed home, accompanied by her wondering friends and attended by the perplexed physician. She was immediately undressed and placed in bed, where she lay all night, vibrating between stupor and a low muttering delirium, in which some irreparable misfortune was indicated without being revealed--was it all delirium? Next, a low, nervous fever supervened, and for six weeks Marguerite De Lancie swayed with a slow, pendulous uncertainty between life and death. The cause of her sudden indisposition remained a mystery. The few cautious inquiries made by Colonel Compton resulted in nothing satisfactory. The two gentlemen whose conversation was supposed by Miss Compton to have occasioned Miss De Lancie’s swoon could not be identified--among the crowd then assembled at the governor’s reception, and now dispersed all over the city--without urging investigation to an indiscreet extent. “This is an inquiry that we cannot with propriety push, Nellie. We must await the issue of Miss De Lancie’s illness. If she recovers she will doubtless explain,” said Colonel Compton. With the opening of the spring, Marguerite De Lancie’s life-powers rallied and convalescence declared itself. In the first stages of her recovery, while yet body and mind were in that feeble state which sometimes leaves the spiritual vision so clear, she lay one day, contemplating her friend, who sat by her pillow, when suddenly she threw her arms around Cornelia’s neck, lifted her eyes in an agony of supplication to her face, and cried: “Oh, Nellie! do you truly love me? Oh, Nellie! love me! love me! lest I go mad!”