ained my presence in her house
sufficiently for me to feel at my ease before her servants, I carried in
the dainty repast she had provided and set it down on the table.

The poor woman was standing where we had left her; but her whole figure
showed languor, and she more than leaned against the bedpost behind her.
As I looked up from the tray and met her eyes, she shuddered and seemed
to be endeavoring to understand who I was and what I was doing in her
room. My premonitions in regard to her were well based. She was in a
raging fever, and was already more than half oblivious to her
surroundings.

Approaching her, I spoke as gently as I could, for her hapless condition
appealed to me in spite of my well founded prejudices against her; and
seeing she was growing incapable of response, I drew her up on the bed
and began to undress her.

I half expected her to recoil at this, or at least to make some show of
alarm, but she submitted to my ministrations almost gratefully, and
neither shrank nor questioned me till I laid my hands upon her shoes.
Then indeed she quivered, and drew her feet away with such an appearance
of terror that I was forced to desist from my efforts or drive her into
violent delirium.

This satisfied me that Louise Van Burnam lay before me. The scar
concerning which so much had been said in the papers would be ever
present in the thoughts of this woman as the tell-tale mark by which she
might be known, and though at this moment she was on the borders of
unconsciousness, the instinct of self-preservation still remained in
sufficient force to prompt her to make this effort to protect herself
from discovery.

I had told Miss Althorpe that my chief reason for intruding upon Miss
Oliver, was to determine if she had in her possession certain rings
supposed to have been taken from a friend of mine; and while this was in
a measure true--the rings being an important factor in the proof I was
accumulating against her,--I was not so anxious to search for them at
this time as to find the scar which would settle at once the question of
her identity.

When she drew her foot away from me then, so violently, I saw that I
needed to search no farther for the evidence required, and could give
myself up to making her comfortable. So I bathed her temples, now
throbbing with heat, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing her fall
into a deep and uneasy slumber. Then I tried again to draw off her
shoes, but the start she