pital; neuralgia, with the trouble about Janet;
neuralgia, with James Poynter's coarse vulgar face full of effrontery
always before her, flaunting his possessions, his power, and his
influence, and staring with parted lips over the words which somehow he
had never yet dared to utter, but which sooner or later she knew must
come.

Neuralgia, with the constant dread that some day her father would
indulge too deeply in the opiate she knew he took every evening;
neuralgia, with the constant carking care of the unpaid tradespeople:
and, above all, that wearisome agony, mingled with the chilling
heartache and those memories of the man from whom she had parted when in
his ardent desire he had told her that it was for her sake he was going
to leave England, to come back some day a rich man, and ask her to be
his wife.

"Dead, dead, dead!" moaned Rich, as she paced the room; "and if I, too,
could only be sleeping, for it is more than I can bear!"

But as the words left her lips, she threw her head back, and pressed her
long hair from her face.

"What a coward I am!" she cried, "with others looking to me for help,
and shrinking from bearing a little pain!"

She hurried to the door, telling herself that there was relief in the
surgery for all she suffered; but as she went along the dark passage to
the door she felt that there was one only anodyne for the greater pain
she bore.

As she slowly approached there was a quick scuffing noise, a dull rattle
as of something falling, and the loud closing of a heavy lid; then, as
she opened the door, she found Bob turning to meet her with an innocent
smile upon his face, while he was uttering a low humming noise, as if he
were practising the art of imitating a musical bee.

"What have you been doing, Bob?" said Rich hastily.

"Me, Miss? Doing?" said the boy wonderingly. "I ain't a-been doing
nothing. 'Tain't likely, 'mong all these here dangerous thinks;" and
Bob waved his hand round the surgery, as if indicating the bottles and
specimen jars.

"Because you have been warned frequently, sir, not to meddle."

"Course I have, Miss, and I wouldn't do no harm."

"Is my father asleep?"

"Jist like a top, Miss. He took his drops, and he's lying on the sofy,
sleeping beautiful. You can hear him breathe if you come and put your
ear to the keyhole."

"No, no," said Rich hastily; but, all the same, she walked quickly to
the consulting-room door, and opened it softly, to look in an