e passage from his own bedroom
farther on. When Ashe had opened it he found himself face to face as it
were with the foaming stream outside. The window, as he had seen it
before, was wide open to the water-fall just beyond it, and the
temperature was piercingly cold and damp. The furniture was of the
roughest, and a few of Kitty's clothes lay scattered about. As he
fumbled for a light, there hovered before his eyes the remembrance of
their room in Hill Street, strewn with chiffons and all the elegant and
costly trifles that made the natural setting of its mistress.

He found the medicines and hurried back. She feebly gave him directions.
"Now the strychnine!--and some brandy."

He did all he could. He drew some chairs together before the fire, and
made a couch for her with pillows and rugs. She thanked him with smiles,
and her eyes followed his every movement.

"Tell your man to get some milk! And listen"--she caught his hand. "Lock
my door. That nice woman down-stairs will come to look after me, and
she'll think I'm asleep."

It was done as she wished. Ashe took in the milk from Dell's hands, and
a fresh supply of wood. Then he turned the key in his own door and came
back to her. She was lying quiet, and seemed revived.

"How cosey!" she said, with a childish pleasure, looking round her at
the bare white walls and scoured boards warmed with the fire-light. The
bitter tears swam in Ashe's eyes. He fell into a chair on the other side
of the fire, and stared--seeing nothing--at the burning logs.

"You needn't suppose that I don't get people to look after me!" she went
on, smiling at him again, one shadowy hand propping her cheek. And she
prattled on about the kindness of the chambermaids at Vevey and Brieg,
and how one of them had wanted to come with her as her maid. "Oh! I
shall find one at Florence if I get there--or a nurse. But just for
these few days I wanted to be free! In the winter there were so many
people about--so many eyes! I just pined to cheat them--get quit of
them. A maid would have bothered me to stay in bed and see doctors--and
you know, William, with this illness of mine you're so <i>restless</i>!"

"Where were you going to?" he said, without looking up.

"Oh! to Italy somewhere--just to see some flowers again--and the sun.
Only not to Venice!"

There was a silence, which she broke by a sudden cry as she drew him
down to her.

"William! you know--I was coming home to you, when that man--found