And that was how it happened.
CHAPTER IX.
ANNA.
Through the rich curtains which shaded the windows of a room looking
out on Fifth Avenue, the late October sun was shining, and as its red
light played among the flowers on the carpet a pale young girl sat
watching it, and thinking of the Hanover hills, now decked in their
autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark's, growing so bright and
beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since
that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean
House and read Lucy Harcourt's letter. The faint was a precursor of
fever, the physician said, when summoned to her aid, and in a tremor
of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her at once removed to New
York, and that was the last Anna remembered.
From the moment her aching head had touched the soft pillows in Aunt
Meredith's house all consciousness had fled, and for weeks she had
hovered so near to death that the telegraph wires bore daily messages
to Hanover, where the aged couple who had cared for her since her
childhood wept, and prayed, and watched for tidings from their
darling. They could not go to her, for Grandpa Humphreys had broken
his leg, and his wife could not leave him, so they waited with what
patience they could for the daily bulletins which Mrs.
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