wer of God, could you believe me and try and rest and sleep?'

Mary looked at her intently. If Catherine could have seen clearly in the
dim light she would have caught something of the cunning of madness
slipping into the dying woman's expression. While she waited for the
answer there was a noise in the kitchen outside, an opening of the outer
door, and a voice. Catherine's heart stood still. She had to make a
superhuman effort to keep her attention fixed on Mary.

'Go!' said the hoarse whisper close beside her, and the girl lifted her
wasted hand, and pushed her visitor from her. 'Go!' it repeated
insistently, with a sort of wild beseeching; then, brokenly, the gasping
breath interrupting, 'There's naw fear--naw fear--fur the likes o' you!'

Catherine rose.

'I'm not afraid,' she said gently, but her hand shook as she pushed her
chair back; 'God is everywhere, Mary.'

She put on her hat and cloak, said something in Mrs. Irwin's ear, and
stooped to kiss the brow which to the shuddering sense under her will
seemed already cold and moist with the sweats of death. Mary watched her
go; Mrs. Irwin, with the air of one bewildered, drew her chair nearer to
the settle; and the light of the fire, shooting and dancing through the
June twilight, threw such fantastic shadows over the face on the pillow
that all expression was lost. What was moving in the crazed mind?
Satisfaction, perhaps, at having got rid of one witness, one jailer, one
of the various antagonistic forces surrounding her? She had a dim
frenzied notion she should have to fight for her liberty when the call
came, and she lay tense and rigid, waiting--the images of insanity
whirling through her brain, while the light slowly, slowly waned.

Catherine opened the door into the kitchen. The two carriers were
standing there, and Robert Elsmere also stood with his back to her,
talking to them in an undertone.

He turned at the sound behind him, and his start brought a sudden flush
to Catherine's cheek. Her face, as the candle-light struck it amid the
shadows of the doorway, was like an angelic vision to him--the heavenly
calm of it just exquisitely broken by the wonder, the shock, of his
presence.

'You here?' he cried, coming up to her, and taking her hand--what secret
instinct guided him?--close in both of his. 'I never dreamt of it--so
late. My cousin sent me over--she wished for news.'

She smiled involuntarily. It seemed to her she had expected this in some