uspended the moment before passed her lips freely now. "Poor soul!"
said the respectable landlady, taking appearances for granted. "Where's
your husband, dear? Try and tell me."

The doctor made his appearance, and went up to the patient.

Time passed, and Mr. Karnegie and his daughter, carrying on the business
of the hotel, received a message from up stairs which was ominous of
something out of the common. The message gave the name and address of an
experienced nurse--with the doctor's compliments, and would Mr. Karnegie
have the kindness to send for her immediately.

The nurse was found and sent up stairs.

Time went on, and the business of the hotel went on, and it was getting
to be late in the evening, when Mrs. Karnegie appeared at last in the
parlor behind the bar. The landlady's face was grave, the landlady's
manner was subdued. "Very, very ill," was the only reply she made to her
daughter's inquiries. When she and her husband were together, a little
later, she told the news from up stairs in greater detail. "A child born
dead," said Mrs. Karnegie, in gentler tones than were customary with
her. "And the mother dying, poor thing, so far as _I_ can see."

A little later the doctor came down. Dead? No.--Likely to live?
Impossible to say. The doctor returned twice in the course of the night.
Both times he had but one answer. "Wait till to-morrow."

The next day came. She rallied a little. Toward the afternoon she began
to speak. She expressed no surprise at seeing strangers by her bedside:
her mind wandered. She passed again into insensibility. Then back to
delirium once more. The doctor said, "This may last for weeks. Or it may
end suddenly in death. It's time you did something toward finding her
friends."

(Her friends! She had left the one friend she had forever!)

Mr. Camp was summoned to give his advice. The first thing he asked for
was the unfinished letter.

It was blotted, it was illegible in more places than one. With pains and
care they made out the address at the beginning, and here and there some
fragments of the lines that followed. It began: "Dear Mr. Brinkworth."
Then the writing got, little by little, worse and worse. To the eyes of
the strangers who looked at it, it ran thus: "I should ill requite * *
* Blanche's interests * * * For God's sake! * * * don't think of _me_ *
* *" There was a little more, but not so much as one word, in those last
lines, was legible.

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