"Head hitting it up again?" asked Uncle Charlie solicitously.

Aunt Isabel nodded.

"You'd better get to bed, then," he said. And, despite his wounded toe, he wouldn't let her attend to the shutting-up "ch.o.r.es," but, accompanied by Missy, hobbled around to all the screen doors himself. Poor Uncle Charlie!

It was hard for Missy to get to sleep that night. Her brain was a dark, seething whirlpool. And the air seemed to grow thicker and thicker; it rested heavily on her hot eyelids, pressed suffocatingly against her throat. And when, finally, she escaped her thoughts in sleep, it was only to encounter them again in troubled dreams.

She was awakened abruptly by a terrific noise. Oh, Lord! what was it?

She sat up. It sounded as if the house were falling down. Then the room, the whole world, turned suddenly a glaring, ghostly white--then a sharp, spiteful, head-splitting crack of sound--then heavier, staccato volleys--then a baneful rumble, dying away.

A thunder-storm! Oh, Lord! Missy buried her face in her pillow. Nothing in the world so terrified her as thunder-storms.

She seemed to have lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more penetrating; it had a queer note in it--almost as if she were crying. Suddenly she did cry out!--And then Uncle Charlie's deep grumble again.

Missy's heart nearly stopped beating. Could it be that Uncle Charlie had found out?--That he was accusing Aunt Isabel and making her cry? But surely they wouldn't quarrel in a thunder-storm! Lightning might hit the house, or anything!

The conjunction of terrors was too much for Missy to bear. Finally she crept out of bed and to the door. An unmistakable moan issued from Aunt Isabel's room. And then she saw Uncle Charlie, in bath-robe and pajamas, coming down the hall from the bathroom. He was carrying a hot-water bottle.

"Why, what's the matter, Missy?" he asked her. "The storm frighten you?"

Missy nodded; she couldn't voice those other horrible fears which were tormenting her.

"Well, the worst is over now," he said rea.s.suringly. "Run back to bed.

Your aunt's sick again--I've just been filling the hot-water bottle for her."

"Is she--very sick?" asked Missy tremulously.

"Pretty sick," answered Uncle Charlie. "But there's nothing you can do.

Jump back into bed."

So Missy crept back, and listened to the gradual steadying down of the rain. She was almost sorry, now, that the whirlwind of frantic elements had subsided; that had been a sort of terrible complement to the whirlwind of anguish within herself.

She lay there tense, strangling a desperate impulse to sob. La Beale Isoud had died of love--and now Aunt Isabel was already sickening. She half-realized that people don't die of love nowadays--that happened only in the Middle Ages; yet, there in the black stormy night, strange, horrible fancies overruled the sane convictions of daytime. It was fearfully significant, Aunt Isabel's sickening so quickly, so mysteriously. And immediately after Mr. Saunders's departure. That was exactly what La Beale Isoud always did whenever Sir Tristram was obliged to leave her; Sir Tristram was continually having to flee away, a kind of knight of the road, too--to this battle or that tourney or what-not--"here to-day, gone to-morrow, never able to stay where his heart would wish."

"Oh! oh!"

At last exhaustion had its way with the taut, quivering little body; the hot eyelids closed; the burning cheek relaxed on the pillow. Missy slept.

When she awoke, the sun, which is so blithely indifferent to sufferings of earth, was high up in a clear sky. The new-washed air was cool and sparkling as a tonic. Missy's physical being felt more refreshed than she cared to admit; for her turmoil of spirit had awakened with her, and she felt her body should be in keeping.

By the time she got dressed and downstairs, Uncle Charlie had breakfasted and was about to go down town. He said Aunt Isabel was still in bed, but much better.

"She had no business to drink all those sodas," he said. "Her stomach was already upset from all that ice-cream and cake the night before--and the hot weather and all--"

Missy was scarcely listening to the last. One phrase had caught her ear: "Her stomach upset!"--How could Uncle Charlie?

But when she went up to Aunt Isabel's room later, the latter reiterated that unromantic diagnosis. But perhaps she was pretending. That would be only natural.

Missy regarded the convalescent; she seemed quite cheerful now, though wan. And not so lovely as she generally did. Missy couldn't forbear a leading remark.

"I'm terribly sorry Mr. Saunders had to go away so soon." She strove for sympathetic tone, but felt inexpert and self-conscious. "Terribly sorry.

I can't--"

And then, suddenly, Aunt Isabel laughed--laughed!--and said a surprising thing.

"What! You, too, Missy? Oh, that's too funny!"

Missy stared--reproach, astonishment, bewilderment, contending in her expression.

Aunt Isabel continued that delighted gurgle.

"Mr. Saunders is a notorious heart-breaker--but I didn't realize he was capturing yours so speedily!"

Striving to keep her dignity, Missy perhaps made her tone more severe than she intended.

"Well," she accused, "didn't he capture yours, Aunt Isabel?"

Then Aunt Isabel, still laughing a little, but with a serious shade creeping into her eyes, reached out for one of Missy's hands and smoothed it gently between her own.

"No, dear; I'm afraid your Uncle Charlie has that too securely tucked away."

Something in Aunt Isabel's voice, her manner, her eyes, even more than her words, convinced Missy that she was speaking the real truth. It was all a kind of wild jumbled day-dream she'd been having. La Beale Aunt Isabel wasn't in love with Mr. Saunders after all! She was in love with Uncle Charlie. There had been no romantic undermeaning in all that harp-ukelele business, in the flasket of ice-cream soda, in the mysterious sickness. The sickness wasn't even mysterious any longer.

Aunt Isabel had only had an "upset."

Deeply stirred, Missy withdrew her hand.

"I think I forgot to open my bed to air," she said, and hurried away to her own room. But, oblivious of the bed, she stood for a long time at the window, staring out at nothing.

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages...

She was still standing there when the maid called her to the telephone.

It was Raleigh Peters on the wire, asking to take her to the dance that night. She accepted, but without enthusiasm. Where were the thrills she had expected to experience while receiving the homage paid a visiting girl? He was just a grocery clerk named Peters!

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages...

She felt very blase as she hung up the receiver.

CHAPTER V. IN THE MANNER OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS

It was raining--a gentle, trickling summer rain, when, under a heap of magazines near a heavenly attic window, Missy and Tess came upon the paper-backed masterpieces of "The d.u.c.h.ess."

The volume Missy chanced first to select for reading was ent.i.tled "Airy Fairy Lilian." The very first paragraph was arresting:

Down the broad oak staircase--through the silent hall--into the drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted; through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the large, dull, handsome apartment almost comfortable...