Chapter XXV: Poverty

After those exciting days and nights Nina fell into a low, nervous fever. In the meantime Sibyl St. Alban had died and Talbot Strangemore had gone back to Europe. The tender-hearted Fieldings were in despair. They did not know what to do.

“Ought we to let her husband know that she is alive?” they had asked each other many times, and one terrible answer had always stared them in the face:

“She is accused of the murder of Mrs. St. Alban. If the officers of the law knew where to find her she would be thrown into prison and tried for her life!”

That terrible thought held them back from what seemed to be their duty to Talbot Strangemore. Nina was safe with them now, and dead to all the world beside. Full of fears and doubts and sorrow they decided to keep her presence with them a secret still until she grew well and strong again. Then Doctor Fielding said she should do as she pleased about the matter and decide her own future. If she chose to remain dead to her old life no one could greatly blame her.

But there were days and nights when Mrs. Fielding, frightened and nervous, was almost tempted to send for Miss Drusilla and confide her strange secret to the ears of the old lady, Nina lay so low and ill, so perilously near the borders of the death for which she longed, that she grew frightened. She was afraid that the girl would die indeed, and her heart ached and her tears fell often while she gazed at the fragile form and wan, white face, with the dark eyes looking so wild and wide and dreary, as if she were so utterly wretched and undone.

In those long days and nights of sorrow and sickness, Nina always had one reproach for Doctor Fielding. When he came and stood beside her looking down at her with his kind, grave eyes, she would away say to him with a pathetic sadness deeper than the wildest reproaches could have seemed, “You should have let me die!”

“Should we not send for Miss Strangemore? She loves Nina, and she will keep her secret,” the wife said one day when the girl seemed sinking fast, and they had almost despaired of her recovery.

But she saw a shiver run over the wasted form, and the hollow dark eyes flared wide open upon her face.

“No, no, no!” Nina muttered, in feverish displeasure, and after that they spoke no more of it, but did their best for the poor sufferer and prayerfully left the issues with God.

March waned, April came in with its soft showers and tenderer breezes, and, contrary to all their expectations, Nina grew better. They knew now that her dreary, darkened life would be spared to her, for although she convalesced with painful slowness they saw that the improvement was decided.

“She will live, but only God knows what she will do with her broken, ruined life, for, oh, how empty the world will be to her without the love of her husband,” sighed Mrs. Fielding, who was so happy in her home, her husband and child, that she had a profound pity and sympathy for less fortunate women than herself.

“I wish that we could take her to the sea-shore to recuperate her exhausted energies,” Doctor Fielding said in May, for the wasted face and the hollow dark eyes of the girl troubled his peace. He longed for her to get well faster.

“And cannot we do so?” his wife asked, wistfully, for she, too, longed to see the drooping, pining invalid grow well and strong again.

He flushed and sighed as though his poverty were a disgrace to his manhood.

“I had as well cry for the moon,” he answered. “I am so poor, dear little wife, and my income from my practice is so small that it barely supports us, even with your strict economy and the toil of your little hands over the weary routine of household tasks. Even the long illness of that dear girl has been a heavy tax upon us, and it will take close financiering to meet our expenses this year; so our greatest wish cannot be gratified,” he added, little dreaming what terrible fruit his kindly spoken and kindly meant words would bear in the near future.