"Aunt Hannah, dear aunt Hannah, will you come up here?" she cried in an excited voice, "Isabel and I want you." Aunt Hannah arose, folded her needles, closed them at the end with a pressure of the thumb, and thrust them into the ball of yarn, muttering all the time, "I could not help it if I wanted to," and she mounted the stairs. Isabel Chester lay on the bed, white with anguish, but with a feverish heat burning in her eyes. The shawl, with its many gorgeous tints, lay around her, mingling with her purple dress in picturesque confusion. She tried to sit up when aunt Hannah approached the bed, but instantly lifted both hands to her temples, and fell back again moaning bitterly. "Ask her, ask her," she cried, looking wildly up at Mary Fuller, "I have been wandering in the hills so long, and am tired out. Ask her for me, Mary Fuller." Aunt Hannah sat down upon the bed, and Mary Fuller stood before her holding Isabel's hot hand in both hers. With the eloquence which springs from an earnest purpose, she told aunt Hannah all that she had herself been able to gather from the lips now quivering with a chill that preceded violent fever. It was a disjointed narrative, but full of heart-fire. Mary wept as she gave it; but aunt Hannah sat perfectly passive, gazing upon the beautiful creature before her with steady coldness. When Mary had done, and stood breathlessly waiting for a reply, the old lady moved stiffly as if the silence had aroused her. "Then she wishes to stay with us," she said. Isabel started up. "I will be no expense, I can paint, and embroider and sew! I can do so many things. All I want is a home. Give me that, only that!" She fell back again, shivering and distressed, looking up to aunt Hannah with a glance of touching appeal that disturbed even the composure of that stony face. "You will let her stay with us!" pleaded Mary. "What else should we do?" inquired aunt Hannah. "She wants a home, and we have got one to give her. Isn't that enough?" Isabel, who had been looking up with a vivid hope in her eyes, broke into a hysterical laugh at this, and seizing aunt Hannah's hard hand, kissed it with passionate gratitude. "One word," questioned aunt Hannah; "do you love that young man?" "Love him, oh, yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!" cried the poor girl, and the sparkle of her eyes was painful to look upon "I think it must kill me to see him no more. I am sure it must!" "And you are sure he loves you?" "_Sure_?" she cried, flinging out her clasped hands, "sure, yes, as I am of my own life!" "And you believe him to be a good man?" "I know it, have we not grown up together? He is passionate, proud, impulsive--but noble. I tell you his faults would be virtues in other men." As aunt Hannah listened, there came a glow upon her sallow cheeks, and a soft smile to her lips, as if something in Isabel's wild enthusiasm had given her pleasure. "She shall stay with us! Surely with all our debts paid, we can find room for the child!"