Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/291

Rh It was the typhoid fever, too, that cast a shroud of mystery upon Reba, and gradually transformed her in the eyes of those whose lives contained nothing secret or concealed, into a romantic figure—enigmatical to them. For the watchers naturally enough had concluded that the name of Chadwick Booth so frequently upon Reba's lips during her delirium must be that of the husband she had mentioned the night she came home, whose ring they had had to wind with a bit of tape to keep it from slipping off her wasting finger. Therefore, when the delirium left her and the name was heard no more, they were convinced of a complexity in Reba's past that forbade questions and prosaic inquiries.

Such had been the freakish nature of Reba's delirium that not once during the run of the fever had she made a single reference to the sailor and her marriage. The indelibly imprinted details of the preceding summer excluded everything else from her brain for a while. So when, on the afternoon of the day she woke up from her illusions, she made her quiet announcement to Aunt Emma, who chanced to be on duty at the time, it created no little excitement in the camp around the green lamp-shade downstairs that evening, when it was repeated for Eunice's benefit.

Emma, in a kindly attempt to break Reba's long scrutiny of the ceiling, had shown her that afternoon a card bearing the name of Louise Bartholomew. The card, she explained to Reba's mildly interested gaze, had accompanied flowers which had long since faded. They had come soon after Aunt Augusta had written to Miss Ellsworth in answer to her inquiry, and