oise in our quiet sitting-room as
I heard now. She was in a fever of exhilaration which, in my foreboding
frame of mind at that moment, it pained and shocked me to see. I lifted
her off the music-stool, and shut up the piano by main force.

"Compose yourself for heaven's sake," I said. "Do you want to be
completely exhausted when the German comes tomorrow?"

That consideration instantly checked her. She suddenly became quiet, with
the abrupt facility of a child.

"I forgot that," she said, sitting down in a corner, with a face of
dismay. "He might refuse to perform the operation! Oh, my dear, quiet me
down somehow. Get a book, and read to me."

I got the book. Ah, the poor author! Neither she nor I paid the slightest
attention to him. Worse still, we abused him for not interesting us--and
then shut him up with a bang, and pushed him rudely into his place on the
book-shelf, and left him upside down and went to bed.

She was standing at her window when I went in to wish her good night. The
mellow moonlight fell tenderly on her lovely face.

"Moon that I have never seen," she murmured softly, "I feel you looking
at me! Is the time coming when I shall look at You?" She turned from the
window, and eagerly put my fingers on her pulse. "Am I quite composed
again?" she asked. "Will he find me well to-morrow? Feel it! feel it! Is
it quiet now?"

I felt it--throbbing faster and faster.

"Sleep will quiet it," I said--and kissed her, and left her.

She slept well. As for me, I passed such a wretched night, and got up so
completely worn out, that I had to go back to my room after breakfast,
and lie down again. Lucilla persuaded me to do it. "Herr Grosse won't be
here till the afternoon," she said. "Rest till he comes."

We had reckoned without allowing for the eccentric character of our
German surgeon. Excepting the business of his profession, Herr Grosse did
everything by impulse, and nothing by rule. I had not long fallen into a
broken unrefreshing sleep, when I felt Zillah's hand on my shoulder, and
heard Zillah's voice in my ear.

"Please to get up, ma'am! He's here--he has come from London by the
morning train."

I hurried into the sitting-room.

There, at the table, sat Herr Grosse with an open instrument-case before
him; his wild black eyes gloating over a hideous array of scissors,
probes, and knives, and his shabby hat hard by with lint and bandages
huddled together anyhow inside it. And there stood Luci