le began to steal on tip-toe to the
inner-door, and Joyce had a lively consciousness that her sight would
not be an agreeable one to Lady Isabel. "They want the room free; they
sent me out."

"Not I," answered Miss Corny. "I could do no good; and those who cannot,
are better away."

"Just what Mr. Wainwright said when he dismissed me," murmured Joyce.
And Miss Carlyle finally passed into the corridor and withdrew.

Joyce sat on; it seemed to her an interminable time. And then she heard
the arrival of Dr. Martin; heard him go into the next room. By and by
Mr. Wainwright came out of it, into the room where Joyce was sitting.
Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and before she could bring
out the ominous words, "Is there any danger?" he had passed through it.

Mr. Wainwright was on his way to the apartment where he expected to find
Mr. Carlyle. The latter was pacing it; he had so paced it all the night.
His pale face flushed as the surgeon entered.

"You have little mercy on my suspense, Wainwright. Dr. Martin has been
here this twenty minutes. What does he say?"

"Well, he cannot say any more than I did. The symptoms are critical, but
he hopes she will do well. There's nothing for it but patience."

Mr. Carlyle resumed his weary walk.

"I come now to suggest that you should send for Little. In these
protracted cases--"

The speech was interrupted by a cry from Mr. Carlyle, half horror, half
despair. For the Rev. Mr. Little was the incumbent of St. Jude's, and
his apprehensions had flown--he hardly knew to what they had flown.

"Not for your wife," hastily rejoined the surgeon--"what good should a
clergyman do to her? I spoke on the score of the child. Should it not
live, it may be satisfactory to you and Lady Isabel to know that it was
baptized."

"I thank you--I thank you," said Mr. Carlyle grasping his hand, in his
inexpressible relief. "Little shall be sent for."

"You jumped to the conclusion that your wife's soul was flitting. Please
God, she may yet live to bear you other children, if this one does die."

"Please God!" was the inward aspiration of Mr. Carlyle.

"Carlyle," added the surgeon, in a musing sort of tone, as he laid his
hand on Mr. Carlyle's shoulder, which his own head scarcely reached,
"I am sometimes at death-beds where the clergyman is sent for in this
desperate need to the fleeting spirit, and I am tempted to ask myself
what good another man, priest though he be, can do at the t