Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/235

 change came; and as the summer drew near to its close, she drooped more and more. There were indeed—as there often is in these cases—alternate intervals of failure and of recruit; but those who watched her most closely and most tenderly saw that when she rallied, she never got back to the point she had last failed from.

The purposed trip to the mother country had to be given up, for she had not now the strength to make the passage as it was then obliged to be made.

People called it a decline—perhaps it was so; but, though gentle as ever, she never revealed her solemn secret—possibly her husband thought she had forgotten it.

The most skilled physicians were called in, but the case baffled their highest art; for she alone knew what had sapped the springs of life, and she would not tell.

The sad summer passed on, and as the flowers faded, she faded with them. When the brilliant days of the Indian summer drew near, and the land put on its gorgeous robes of regal beauty, she would sit, propped up in her cushioned chair, at the southern