le, which she felt in the marrow of her small bones meant mischief.

"Your word of honour--your word of honour as a gentleman that you'll
play fair," she urged vehemently, "or I swear I'll not come back!"

"You forget, my little Bush-Queen," Chesney said, still smiling,
"there's no such thing as honour among morphinomaniacs. You've told me
that yourself, often enough, my Poppet, have you not?"

"Shame! Shame!" she cried, with passion. "Here you are, through the
worst--and you won't even promise that you'll keep on! My word! I don't
believe I'll come back, no matter _how_ you act!"

"'Suit yourself,' Bush-lass," Chesney returned coolly, quoting one of
her favourite expressions.

* * * * *

Anne went to Sophy before leaving--went to her bedroom and under the
unusual excitement of her double anxiety over parent and patient, seized
the slender white hands in her little skinny brown ones, wringing them
eagerly to accentuate her passionate words of warning.

"Watch him yourself--_yourself_!" she begged. "Don't trust him a
moment--not though he swore on the head of his own son. He means
mischief. I know him by now. I know him as only a nurse who's tussled
through the worst of the morphia craze with a man _can_ know him. Don't
leave him to Gaynor, or his mother, or even Doctor Bellamy. I don't know
what sort of nurse they'll send you. She may be good, or she may be a
chump. But"--the little spurt of very human vanity became her eager,
cocky face--"but there's not many Anne Hardings," she wound up. "I give
you that for what it's worth, Mrs. Chesney. Forgive my tooting my own
trumpet."

Sophy promised, feeling scared and forlorn again, now that this strong
little being was going. She had come to depend on her as the one means
of Cecil's salvation. Now she was going. Menace, dark and formless,
seemed to waver like an evil shadow on the dreary walls of Dynehurst.
How could one grapple with a shadow? Only Anne Harding knew the magic
tune to which evil shadows danced obedience.

The little nurse left within an hour after receiving the telegram, and
Sophy went to her husband as soon as the carriage drove from the door.
Anne had turned over her charts to her, with the hypodermic syringes and
morphia. As the nurse had instructed, she locked everything away before
leaving her room. Between every dose they must be locked away again. No
slightest risk must be run, in the interval between Anne's depar