“I do not like the look of it,” she muttered, shaking her gray head, ominously. “’Twill be a mercy if fever doesn’t set in after all that passion she was in. And if it does, he daren’t bring the physician again. The risk will be too great.” She started when the blue eyes unclosed presently and looked up into her face. They were unnaturally dark and bright. “Send Mr. Delaney to me,” she said, “I am not going to tell him what you said, nurse, oh, no! Only send him here.” He came, and when he saw the hot flush on her cheeks, and the brilliant light in her eyes he was frightened. They were unnatural. Aline put out her dainty, dimpled hand to him. “I was very rude to you,” she said, simply. “Will you pardon me, Mr. Delaney?” He clasped the small hand gently and assured her that he was not offended in the least. He knew that he had given her great cause to be angry with him. “Still I need not have been such a little wretch,” she said, “and--and--I punished myself when I would not take the flowers. I wanted them very much! Will you give them to me now?” He brought the little basket to her, and she buried her hot face among the cool, dewy leaves of the roses. She began to talk to them in a childish whisper, that suddenly grew into a loud, meaningless, vacant babble. Oran Delaney looked anxiously at Mrs. Griffin. “Great Heaven!” he said, “what ails her? What does it mean?” She shook her gray head gloomily. “It is fever! I feared as much,” she said. “The excitement was too great in her weak, wounded condition. Heaven only knows how it will end.” It was fever indeed. Aline’s reckless indulgence of her wrath had wrought the worst possible results. Fever and delirium had set in. The wound which they had thought so lightly of at first now threatened to terminate fatally. “If she dies, it will be I who have killed her. I was a fool; I was mad surely when I told her all I did,” said Oran Delaney to himself. The fever set in high, and strong, and violent. It was pitiful to hear the sweet, high-pitched voice raving of the dear ones from whom she was cruelly separated. As she fought the hard battle between the opposing forces of life and death she called upon them all to help her--mamma, papa, Max and Effie, all those dearly beloved ones who were so near and yet so cruelly far. CHAPTER XVII. The long, sweet summer days glided past into September. Already the parti-colored leaves of autumn began to be whirled through the air by the cool sweet breeze. There were hints of autumn coolness in the breeze as it sighed among the trees in the little country town of Chester.