This state of affairs was almost intolerable to Richard, who, if he had loved Rose before, felt that she was tenfold dearer to him now, and so, though he dared not come in her sight when awake, he watched by her when she slept, standing over her hour after hour, and enduring with almost superhuman strength the care which Dr. Clayton could hardly be said to share, so absorbed was he in grief at the thoughts of losing her at last. Thus the days wore on until her frenzy abated, and she sank into a state of apathy from which nothing could rouse her, not even the sight of Richard Delafield, from whom she no longer shrank, but for whom she seemed to have conceived a kind of pity, asking him sometimes “if he hated her because she did not love him, and telling him how hard she had tried to do so, but could not, and that he must go away and leave her alone!” And all this while it never occurred to him that she fancied _he_ was Dr. Clayton, though he _did_ marvel at her never mentioning her affianced husband, in whose arms she would fall asleep, and whose hand she would kiss, calling him Charlie, and asking if he had come to carry her home. Matters were in this state when one day, towards the dusk of evening, he was surprised by the appearance of Halbert, who said that the _cholera_, had broken out at the Pines, and he must come immediately, adding further, that his mother and Ada had both had it, that several of the blacks were dead, and that the man, who two days before had been sent to Cedar Grove, had died upon the road. Greatly alarmed for the safety of his people, Mr. Delafield started at once for the Pines, whither, in another chapter, we will follow him. CHAPTER XXV. THE ANGEL OF THE PINES. The unexpected arrival of their master’s sister and her cortége at “The Pines,” as Mr. Delafield’s plantation was called, produced quite a sensation among the blacks, who hastened to receive their guests with many demonstrations of joy, rather more affected than real, for Mrs. Lansing was not very popular with them. Halbert and Jessie, on the contrary, were general favorites among the servants, who thought them little less than angels, particularly Jessie, who, with her sweet, young face, laughing eyes, and wavy hair, flitted like a sunbeam from cabin to cabin, asking after this old Aunty, or that old Uncle, and screaming with delight when in one hut she found _three babies_, all of an age, and belonging to the same mother, who boasted of having given to her master “fifteen as likely girls and boys as there were in Georgy.” As yet the triplets had no names, but the arrival of the family suggested a new idea to Hannah, who, seating herself by Jessie, proposed that they be called, “Richard Delafield, Ada Montrose, and Jessie Lansing.”