So she had slept since the fever had begun to go down. Probably she had had the best of the intervening weeks. There was the slow stupor of a fever gaining ground. It began with the headache of the Turberville’s dance, a headache which never lifted until Elma returned to her own again, weak and prostrate in bed. The stupor gradually cut her off from common affairs. It sent her to bed first because she could no longer stand up, and it crowded back her ideas and her memory till at last she was in the full swing of a delirium. What this illness cost Mr. and Mrs. Leighton in anxiety, probably no one knew. Elma had always covered up her claims to sympathy and petting, always been moderately well. Here she was with blazing cheeks and wandering eyes talking largely and at random about anything or every one. Mr. Leighton used to sit by her and stroke her hair. Long years afterwards, she was to feel the touch of his fingers, hear the tones of his voice as he said, "Poor little Elma." She faded gradually into the delirium which seemed to have cut her illness in two, the one illness where she lay with dry mouth and an everlasting headache, the other where she was merely hungry. Mrs. Leighton was appalled by the worrying of Elma’s mind. She went through some of her wild dreams with her, calling her back at places by the mere sound of her voice to a kind of sub-consciousness in which Elma grew infinitely relieved. "Oh, is that you, mummy? Have I really been dreaming?" She dreamt of Mabel and she dreamt of Adelaide Maud. But more than any one, she dreamt of Mr. Symington. Here is where the deceptiveness of a fever comes in. Elma pleaded so piteously with her mother to bring back Mr. Symington that Mrs. Leighton awoke to an entirely new and wrong idea of the state of Elma’s affections. "It’s quite ridiculous, John," said she, "but that child, she was only a child, seems to have filled her head with notions of Mr. Symington." "What! More of it?" asked poor Mr. Leighton. "She begs and begs to have him back," said Mrs. Leighton. "I’ve never made out why he left as he did," said Mr. Leighton. "There was always the idea with me that he cleared out for a reason. But this small child, why, she hadn’t her hair up." "She will soon be eighteen," said Mrs. Leighton. He went into her room a little later. Elma lay with unseeing eyes staring at him. He could hardly bear it. "Elma," he said vaguely, trying to recall her. "Oh," she answered promptly, but still staring, "is that you, Sym--Sym--Symington!" Her father choked down what he could of the lump that gathered, and moved quietly away.