hands wavered and sank
helpless. He dropped, as the dead drop. He lay as the dead lie, in the
arms of the wife who had denied him.

She knelt on the floor, and rested his head on her knee. She caught the
arm of the steward hurrying to help her, with a hand that closed round
it like a vise. "Go for a doctor," she said, "and keep the people of the
house away till he comes." There was that in her eye, there was that
in her voice, which would have warned any man living to obey her in
silence. In silence Mr. Bashwood submitted, and hurried out of the room.

The instant she was alone she raised him from her knee. With both arms
clasped round him, the miserable woman lifted his lifeless face to hers
and rocked him on her bosom in an agony of tenderness beyond all relief
in tears, in a passion of remorse beyond all expression in words.
In silence she held him to her breast, in silence she devoured his
forehead, his cheeks, his lips, with kisses. Not a sound escaped her
till she heard the trampling footsteps outside, hurrying up the stairs.
Then a low moan burst from her lips, as she looked her last at him, and
lowered his head again to her knee, before the strangers came in.

The landlady and the steward were the first persons whom she saw when
the door was opened. The medical man (a surgeon living in the street)
followed. The horror and the beauty of her face as she looked up at him
absorbed the surgeon's attention for the moment, to the exclusion of
everything else. She had to beckon to him, she had to point to the
senseless man, before she could claim his attention for his patient and
divert it from herself.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

The surgeon carried Midwinter to the sofa, and ordered the windows to be
opened. "It is a fainting fit," he said; "nothing more."

At that answer her strength failed her for the first time. She drew a
deep breath of relief, and leaned on the chimney-piece for support. Mr.
Bashwood was the only person present who noticed that she was overcome.
He led her to the opposite end of the room, where there was an
easy-chair, leaving the landlady to hand the restoratives to the surgeon
as they were wanted.

"Are you going to wait here till he recovers?" whispered the steward,
looking toward the sofa, and trembling as he looked.

The question forced her to a sense of her position--to a knowledge
of the merciless necessities which that position now forced her to
confront. With a heavy sigh she loo