Family Pride

Here was a phase of affairs for which Mrs. Cameron was not prepared, and excessively mortified that Morris should hear Katy's ravings, she tried again to quiet her, consoling herself with the reflection that as Morris was Katy's cousin, he would not repeat what he heard, and feeling gratified now that Dr. Craig was absent, as she could not be so sure of him. If Katy's delirium continued, no one must be admitted to the room except those who could be trusted, and as there had been already several rings, she said to Esther that as the fever was probably malignant and contagious, no one must be admitted to the house with the expectation of seeing the patient, while the servants were advised to stay in their own quarters, except as their services might be needed elsewhere. And so it was that by the morrow the news had spread of some infectious disease at No. ---- on Madison Square, which was shunned as carefully as if the smallpox itself had been raging there instead of the brain fever, which increased so fast that Morris suggested to Mrs. Cameron that she telegraph for Wilford.

"They might find him, and they might not," Mark Ray said, when the message came down to the office. "They could try, at all events," and in a few moments the telegraphic wires were carrying the news of Katy's illness, both to the West, where Wilford had gone, and to the East, where Helen read with a blanched cheek that Katy perhaps was dying, and she was needed again.

This was Mrs. Cameron's suggestion, wrung out by the knowing that some woman besides herself was needed in the sickroom, and by the feeling that Helen could be trusted with the story of the first marriage, which Katy talked of constantly, telling it so accurately that only a fool would fail of being convinced that there was much of truth in those delirious ravings.