“I think she would prefer a few words from your lips in acknowledgment of your gratitude. Aunt Cyrilla tells me that she earns a monthly salary by acting as her private secretary,” he answered rather curtly. Lelia laughed heartlessly. “I could never bring myself to stoop to the lower classes to thank them for services. Aunt Cy has fed and clothed that gipsy foundling all her life, and she has done no more for us than we had a right to expect. Of course, I shall give the girl a piece of jewelry, and I think that will pay our debt.” Her betrothed husband said not a word; his thoughts were unutterable. He felt the warm young life bounding through his veins, and knew he owed it all to the girl lying up-stairs in delirious pain, the cost she was paying for her bravery. He looked at Lelia, so beautiful, so proud, and so arrogant, and knew that she was spared to him only through the sacrificing spirit of the girl she had openly scorned--and he marveled. Never before had he felt so disgusted, but, reading his vexation in his face, she flew to him with fond reproaches, and he was beguiled again into the fondness that her beauty claimed as its just due. The guests all arrived that afternoon, and the social whirl at The Crags became as gay as though a beautiful, brave young girl were not lying on her bed delirious with fever, watched closely by a trained nurse, with the doctor coming every day and shaking his gray head as he felt her pulse and listened to her senseless ravings. “Worse than I looked for--much worse. But I’ll try to pull her through,” he said to the mistress of The Crags, who, between her social duties and her anxiety over Gipsy, was nearly frantic. And one sleepless night she came to a startling resolution. “If God spares me this beautiful, brave girl, I will adopt her as my beloved daughter and heiress!” CHAPTER XI. THE UNBIDDEN GUEST. “Laws, honey, look out o’ the winder! The folkses is all a-goin’ picknicking. ’Tis a pretty sight!” So exclaimed Mrs. Goodwill, Gipsy’s nurse, to her patient, who was sitting up for the first time in ten days, propped round with pillows in an easy chair. Very dearly had she paid in acute suffering for the saving of Laurie’s and Lelia’s lives, and a pallid shadow of her former lovely self she looked--poor Gipsy!--as she turned her large, wistful dark eyes toward the sight indicated. The guests were all going out for a day’s pleasure, and, as the nurse said, the sight was a pretty one. At the head rode the betrothed lovers, Laurie mounted on Satan, and Lelia on Saint. Two more couples were on horseback, two more in buggies, including the chaperon, Mrs. Thurston, with her husband, the captain. Miss Willoughby had remained at home, glad, like most people of her quiet character, of a day’s rest from social duties.