o getting at the
rights of it, of course. He won't say a word himself; and I went all
to pieces for the moment. I only know that when the firing was
hottest, he managed to cross in front of me; that the bullet in his leg
ought by rights to have gone into mine; and it's quite bad enough to
know that."

Quita's eyes swam in sudden tears. "I always thought him a dear
fellow," she said softly. "Just a dear fellow; not much more. But
now--one begins to admire your 'Dick.'"

Lenox nodded. "You never quite know what stuff a fellow's made of till
he gets his chance."

But Quita, crouching lower, had bowed her forehead upon his hand.

"What is it, lass?" he asked; and when she looked up, not only her
lashes, but her cheeks were wet.

"Eldred, am I hideously wicked?" she faltered. "I was--I was thanking
God that he _did_ take his chance. Think--if it _had_ been you! _Am_
I wicked?"

He drew her close, and kissed her. "Hardly that, dearest. Only very
human."

"But there's no danger, is there? No permanent damage done?"

"No. Mercifully the bullet only grazed the bone. He may have a week
of fever, and a slow convalescence; but you'll not grudge the trouble
of nursing him, after what I've told you."

"I'd never have done that. And now,"--she rose to her feet, her eyes
kindling,--"now it will be a privilege. Oh, I'll be ever so good to
him," she added under her breath.

And for the next three weeks--being, as she had said, a creature of
extremes--she was so uniformly and enchantingly 'good to him' that
those long days of fever, pain, and enforced idleness were among the
most delectable Max Richardson had ever known, or ever wished to know;
that, in truth, each landmark on the road back to health and duty could
no longer be regarded with that unmixed satisfaction common to the
masculine invalid.

But Richardson was too little capable of analysis to be troubled by
this wrong-headed state of things, or to detect the hidden seed from
which his flower of contentment sprang. Mrs Lenox was astonishingly
kind to him, and quite the most charming companion a sick man could
desire: that was all.

His sharp bout of fever once over, she sang to him, read to him, argued
with him on a quaint variety of subjects, enlarging his mental horizon,
drawing out thoughts and opinions at whose existence he had never
guessed till now. But for him the hidden charm of their intercourse
lay less in what she said or sang, than i