Perhaps it were better so, but he would not give up till every possible effort had been made to restore her.
Both ladies were speedily conveyed to the house, Elsie, already conscious, committed to the care of her mother and Aunt Chloe, while Arthur, Dr.
Barton and others, used every exertion for Enna's resuscitation.

They were at length successful in fanning to a flame the feeble spark of life that yet remained, but fever supervened, and for weeks afterward she was very ill.
Elsie kept her bed for a day, then took her place in the family again, looking quite herself except a slight paleness.

No; a close observer might have detected another change; a sweet glad light in the beautiful brown eyes that was not there before; full of peaceful content and quiet happiness as her young life had been.
Lester's words of passionate love had reached the ear that seemed closed to all earthly sounds; they were heard as in a dream, but afterward recalled with a full apprehension of their reality and of all they meant to her and to him.
Months ago she had read the same sweet story in his eyes, but how sweeter far it was to have heard it from his lips.
She had sometimes wondered that he held his peace so long, and again had doubted the language of his looks, but now those doubts were set at rest, and their next interview was anticipated with a strange flutter of the heart, a longing for, yet half shrinking from the words he might have to speak.
But the day passed and he did not come; another and another, and no word from him.

How strange! he was still her preceptor in her art studies; did he not know that she was well enough to resume them?
If not, was it not his place to inquire?
Perhaps he was ill.

Oh, had he risked his health, perhaps his life in saving hers?
She did not ask; her lips refused to speak his name, and would nobody tell her?
At last she overheard her father saying to Eddie, "What has become of Lester Leland?
It strikes me as a little ungallant that he has not been in to inquire after the health of your aunt and sister." "He has gone away," Eddie answered, "he left the morning after the accident." "Gone away," echoed Elsie's sinking heart.