A Daughter of the Vine by Gertrude Atherton

The days were very long to Dudley Thorpe. The invalid recovered slowly, and demanded much of his time. Before an answer to his letter could be expected, Harold was sufficiently mended to be removed to the house of a friend on Long Island. He declared his intention of sailing for California as soon as he could obtain the doctor's permission to travel. The lady to whom he was betrothed came over from England and married him; and Thorpe had little to do but to think.

He bitterly reproached himself that he had asked Nina to come to New York, instead of trusting to his brother's recuperative powers, and starting at once for California. He dared not go now, lest he pass her. But he was beset by doubts, and some of them were nightmares. She would come if her child had lived, and she had weathered her year. If she had not! He knew what she had suffered during that year, would have guessed without the aid of the few letters she had written after letters from him had ceased to reach California. Exposure and shame might have come to her since. If he could have been sure that she believed in him, he would have feared little; but it was not to be expected that she had received a letter he had sent her from the West Indies. The telegraph has averted many a tragedy, but there was none across the United States.