said a clear,
competent voice, and I knew at once who she was--the Professor's
sister's trained nurse. For one dreadful moment I feared I _was_ the
Professor's sister--it seemed to me it must be so, that there was no
other course open to me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed!
Then, as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been
drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been moved into the
study; her bed was in my room. Doubtless the Professor had sent for
her.

I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, apparently, for
in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious broth, which she fed me
very neatly by the spoonful. It made another man of me, that broth,
and I watched her record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my
important affairs, with great interest.

"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and
rather high to my critical sense.

"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough,
wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed."

"What was it?"

"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of
doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of
fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."

I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the
invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond
the common, that fever!

"How did I get here?"

She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of
the kind, wise, brown eyes.

"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will
be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose
yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for
now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?"

I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on.

"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr.
Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you
might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for
forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here
supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew
anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran
in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed
him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a
marshy old lane about si