his arms. Dead
to all outward semblance, at first, but when they had placed her in bed,
and applied the usual restoratives, the eyelids quivered, the dusk eyes
opened, and with a strange, shuddering sob, she came back to life. For
one instant she gazed up into the kindly, anxious faces of the spinster
sisters; then memory came back with a rush. She was not Laurence's wife;
he had betrayed and cast her off; she would never look upon his face
again in this world. With a low moan of agony the sisters never forgot,
she turned her face to the wall and lay still. So she had lain since.

A night and a day had passed. She had neither slept nor eaten--she had
scarcely moved--she lay like a stone. All night long the light had
burned, all night long the sisters stole softly in and out, always to
find the small, rigid figure, as they had left it; the white face
gleaming like marble in the dusk; the sleepless black eyes, wild and
wide. They spoke to her in fear and trembling. She did not heed, it is
doubtful if she heard. In a dull, dumb trance she lay, curiously
conscious of the figures flitting to and fro; of whispered words and
frightened faces; of the beat of the rain on the glass; of the black
night lying on the black sea, her heart like a stone in her bosom. She
was not Laurence's wife--Laurence had left her for ever. These two
thoughts kept beating, beating, in heart, and brain, and soul, like the
ceaseless torment of the lost.

The new day came and went. With it came Mr. Liston--pale, quiet,
anxious. The Misses Waddle, angry and curious, at once plied him with
questions. What was it all about? What had he said to Mrs. Laurence?
Where was Mr. Laurence? Was it ill news of him? And little Mr. Liston,
with a face of real pain and distress, had made answer "Yes, it was ill
news of Mr. Laurence. Would they please not ask him questions? He
couldn't really tell. For Heaven's sake let them try and bring that poor
suffering child round. He would pay every cent due them, and take her
away the moment she was able to travel."

He sits in the little parlor now, his head on his hand, gazing out at
the gloomy evening prospect, with a very downcast and gloomy face. He is
alone, a bit of fire flickers and falls in the grate. Miss Waddle the
elder is not yet at home from her Chelsea school. Miss Waddle the
younger, in a glow of inky inspiration, is skurrying through a thrilling
chapter of "The Mystery of the Double Tooth," and within that i