CHAPTER XII CONNIE’S ILLNESS It was a heavy, dreamless sleep which came to Connie that night, and when she woke at a late hour the next morning the storm was over, the sun was shining into the room, while Kenneth stood by her, counting her pulse. She tried to lift her head, but it fell back upon the pillow, as, with an effort to smile, she asked, “Am I going to be ill?” “Not going to be. You are; but we will soon have you well,” Kenneth replied, holding her hot hand a moment. “Well, I’m glad I’m here. So glad!” Connie said, closing her eyes and falling asleep again, while Kenneth watched her anxiously. It was past the middle of March when Connie came in the storm, and the early daffodils and crocuses were in bloom when she at last sat up and looked around her at a world which seemed so new. For weeks she had lain between life and death, stricken with fever which scorched her blood and stained her face a purple tint, so high it ran at times. From Rocky Point, Dr. Catherin came in consultation, and a specialist from Albany, while Kenneth kept his tireless watch at her side. At first she talked constantly,—sometimes of Count Costello and the dreary house in Genoa, and again of something Kenneth could not understand, except that there was a _he_ who must at some time have been closely mixed up in Connie’s life. She never spoke his name, and Kenneth would not ask it, or question her, as she babbled on of the Jungfrau and the mountains and the bowlder by the brook and the moonlight nights among the Alps, in all of which he played a prominent part. Once he did say to her, “Where is he now?” and she answered, “Gone, gone.” In the very first of her illness she had kept repeating, “Glad, so glad,” and they knew her gladness was because she was there. Then she forgot it, and now she took up the word “Gone,” and rang change after change upon it, till Kenneth wanted to stop his ears to shut out the sound. After a little her mood changed, and she talked of the time she came to the farmhouse a little girl and played with the cats and Chance. “Where are they?” she asked, with something like consciousness, and Kenneth told her that only six cats now ate in the wooden trough, and that Chance died long ago and was buried in the inclosure where they had their Christmas tree. “Oh, yes, the tree!” she exclaimed, going over it with every detail, calling her own name and Chance’s and Harry’s, and finally Kenneth, who had nothing but herself. “The best gift of all,” Kenneth said, putting his cool hand on her hot forehead. For a moment Connie looked at him with her great bright eyes, in which the tears slowly gathered. “Brush them away,” she said. “I haven’t the strength.”