of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait
upon her generous benefactress."

The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a
look, though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon
the face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by
others communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which
had held him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable
state of the child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse
in her effort to sound the mystery of her condition?

His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was
broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:

"She will live--this poor Helena--how long?" she asked, with no break in
her voice's wonted music.

The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from
him, answered:

"I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite's case. I should like, with your
permission, to consult some New York physician."

"Indeed!"

A single word, but as it left this woman's thin lips Violet recoiled,
and, perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in
a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order,
though it was quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when
she added, with a touch of her old charm:

"Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never
interfere with a doctor's decisions. But" and here her natural
ascendancy of tone and manner returned in all its potency, "it would
kill me to know that a stranger was approaching Helena's bedside. It
would kill her. She's too sensitive to survive such a shock."

Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on
a minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor's
face for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw
there, and all she heard him say was the conventional reply:

"I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
effect of my latest prescription."

Another day!

The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite's features as this
word left the physician's lips warned Violet not to let another day go
by without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed
but little interest in anything beyond her own p