* * * * *

Luckily Nurse Trevor was at hand and disengaged; and Anstice had the
satisfaction of finding her safely installed and apparently completely
at home in her new surroundings when he paid his last visit to Cherry
Orchard late that night.

She was a pretty girl of twenty-seven, who had had a good deal of
experience in nursing children, and although poor little Cherry was by
this time too ill to pay much attention to any of the people around her,
it really seemed as though Margaret Trevor's soft voice, with its
cooing, dove-like notes, had a soothing influence on the suffering
child.

Anstice stayed some time in Cherry's room, doing all his skill could
suggest for the alleviation of his little patient's pain, and when at
length he took his departure Chloe herself came downstairs with him.

"What a lovely night!" She had opened the big hall door quietly while he
sought his hat. "The moon must be nearly at the full, I think."

Together they stood on the steps looking out over the dew-drenched
garden. The white stars of the jasmine which clustered thickly round the
house sent out a delicious fragrance, and there were a dozen other
scents on the soft and balmy air, as though the sleeping stocks and
carnations and mignonette breathed sweetly in their sleep.

A big white owl flow, hooting, across the path, and Chloe shivered.

"I hate owls--I always think them unlucky, harbingers of evil," she
said, and her face, as she spoke, was quite pale.

In an ordinary way Anstice would have deemed it his duty to scoff at
such superstition; but to-night, his nerves unstrung, by the happenings
of the last few days, his bodily vigour at a low ebb, his mind a chaos
of miserable, hopeless memories and fears, Chloe's words woke a quite
unexpected response in his soul.

"Don't say that, Mrs. Carstairs!" He spoke sharply. "Don't let us talk
of bad luck--to-night of all nights!"

In the moonlight her narrow blue eyes studied his face with sudden
keenness, and she felt an unusual desire to bring comfort to the soul
which she felt with instinctive certainty stood in need of some help.

As a rule Chloe Carstairs, like Anstice himself, was too much
preoccupied with the thought of her own private grudge against fate to
have any sympathy to spare for others who might have known that Deity's
frown; but to-night, owing possibly to some softening of her mental
fibres induced by the sight of her child'