“Mabel, dear, come back and sit down,” said Mrs. Maynard, putting a daintily embroidered handkerchief to her eyes, which, to tell the truth, bore no traces of tears. “Your father,” she continued “is dead. He has been dead for two years and over; he died—let me see, it was just ten months after you left home. Of course we could not send you word as we thought that you were drowned; in fact, I may say your father just worried himself to death thinking of you, although I told him, time and again, it was so foolish of him, for, if you were dead it couldn’t be helped, and if you were alive, you would likely be taken care of someway, as it really happened, you see. I never could see the sense of worrying over things that way, but, my poor, dear brother was different.” Mabel sat as if suddenly turned to stone, while her aunt delivered this long diatribe. Slowly she seemed to recover herself and turned to her aunt a face that was ashy in its pallor, as she almost whispered: “Dead! Aunt Kate, did you say dead? Oh! I never thought of this. My father who was always so strong, dead! I always thought of him as broken hearted by the loss of his daughter. Oh, my father, my father.” As these words passed her lips her body swayed forward slowly and she would have fallen to the floor, if Ahleka had not caught her in his arms. He laid her gently on a couch, which stood near a window, supporting her head on his arm. Mrs. Maynard rushed here and there about the room in a fruitless search for some restorative, wringing her hands and crying: “Oh dear, this is just like Mabel; she always did do such unexpected things. I never saw any one like her.” “Get some water,” said Ahleka, briefly, “and call some one who can assist her.” “I will get the water, but dear me I don’t want any one to see her until she is properly dressed; for, of course, as she has just heard of her father’s death she must put on mourning, even if he has been dead two years.” With this she left the room, soon returning with the water Ahleka had asked for. Mabel slowly regained a sort of semi-consciousness, but for hours she lay as motionless as one dead, except that her eyes sometimes moved slowly about the room. The physician who had been summoned, gravely shook his head as one remedy after another failed to have the desired effect. The next day he pronounced it a case of brain fever. For days Mabel hovered on the borders of the shadowy land of death. Ahleka scarcely left her bedside, night or day, not withstanding the fact that Mrs. Maynard was horrified at the frightful impropriety of such a proceeding; in spite of all she would say or do, he would stay. CHAPTER XXII.