You must want
tea, Grace. Go, I will take your place."

Grace arose and left the room, and Kate seated herself in the low chair,
with eyes full of tender compassion. What a shadow he was of his former
self--so pale, so thin, so wasted! The hand lying on the counterpane was
almost transparent, and the forehead, streaked with damp brown hair, was
like marble.

"Poor fellow!" Kate thought, pushing these stray locks softly back, and
forgetting how dangerously akin pity is to love--"poor fellow!"

Yes, it has come to this. Sick--dying, perhaps--Kate Danton found how
dear this once obnoxious young Doctor had grown to her heart. "How
blessings brighten as they take their flight!" Now that she was on the
verge of losing him forever, she discovered his value--discovered that
her admiration was very like love. How could she help it? Women admire
heroes so much! And was not this brave young Doctor a real hero? From
first to last, had not his life in St. Croix been one list of good and
generous deeds?

The very first time she had ever seen him, he had been her champion, to
save her from the insults and rudeness of two drunken soldiers. He had
been a sort of guardian angel to poor Agnes in her great trouble. He had
saved her brother's life and honour. He had perilled his own life to
save that of her sister. The poor of St. Croix spoke of him only to
praise and bless him. Was not this house besieged every day with scores
of anxious inquirers? He was so good, so great, so noble, so
self-sacrificing, so generous--oh! how could she help loving him? Not
with the love that had once been Reginald Stanford's, whose only basis
was a fanciful girl's liking for a handsome face, but a love far deeper
and truer and stronger. She looked back now at the first infatuation,
and wondered at herself. The scales had fallen from her eyes, and she
saw her sister's husband in his true light--false, shallow, selfish,
dishonourable.

"Oh," she thought, with untold thanksgiving in her heart, "what would
have become of me if I had married him?"

There was another sore subject in her heart, too--that short-lived
betrothal to Sir Ronald Keith. How low she must have fallen when she
could do that! How she despised herself now for ever entertaining the
thought of that base marriage. She could thank Father Francis at last.
By the sick-bed of Doctor Frank she had learned a lesson that would last
her a lifetime.

The radiance of the sunset was fading out of