Daisy did not come down to dinner that night, and the maid who called
her the next morning reported her as ill and acting very strangely.
Through the summer a malarial fever had prevailed to some extent in and
about Rouen, and the physician whom Madame Lafarcade summoned to the
sick girl expressed a fear that she was coming down with it, and ordered
her kept as quiet as possible.
"She seems to have something weighing on her mind. Has she heard any bad
news from home?" he asked, as in reply to his question where her pain
was the worst Daisy always answered: "It reached him too late--too late, and I am so sorry."
Madame knew of no bad news, she said, and then as she saw the foreign
paper lying on the table, she took it up, and, guided by the pencil
marks, read the notice of Guy Thornton's marriage, and that gave her the
key at once to Daisy's mental agitation. Daisy had been frank with her
and told her as much of her story as was necessary, and she knew that
the Guy Thornton married to Julia Hamilton had once called Daisy his
wife.
"Excuse me, she is, or she has something on her mind, I suspect," she
said to the physician, who was still holding Daisy's hand and looking
anxiously at her flushed cheeks and bright, restless eyes.
"I thought so," he rejoined, "and it aggravates all the symptoms of her
fever. I shall call again to-night."
He did call and found his patient worse, and the next day he asked
Madame Lafarcade: "Has she friends in this country? If so, they ought to know."
A few hours later, and in his lodgings at Berlin, Tom read the following
dispatch: "Mrs. Thornton is dangerously ill. Come at once."
It was directed to Mr. McDonald, who with his wife had been on a trip to
Russia, and was expected daily. Feeling intuitively that it concerned
Daisy, Tom had opened it, and without a moment's hesitation packed his
valise, and, leaving a note for the McDonalds when they should return,
started for Rouen. Daisy did not know him, and in her delirium she said
things to him and of him which hurt him cruelly. Guy was her theme, and
the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to
go for Guy, to bring him to her and tell him how much she loved him and
how good she would be if he would take her back.
"Father wants me to marry Tom," she said in a whisper, and Tom's heart
almost stood still as he listened; "and Tom wanted me, too, but I
couldn't, you know, even if he were worth his weight in gold. I could
not love him. Why, he's got red hair, and such great freckles on his
face, and big feet and hands with freckles on them. Do you know Tom?"