ittle while our
lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All thing' are
taken from us--"'

There came an interruption, hurried, peremptory. A farmer over at
Kingston Seymour had been seized with alarming illness; the doctor must
come at once.

'Very sorry, girls. Tell James to put the horse in, sharp as he can.

In ten minutes Dr. Madden was driving at full speed, alone in his
dog-cart, towards the scene of duty.

About seven o'clock Rhoda Nunn took leave, remarking with her usual
directness, that before going home she would walk along the sea-front
in the hope of a meeting with Mr. Smithson and his daughter. Mrs. Nunn
was not well enough to leave the house to-day; but, said Rhoda, the
invalid preferred being left alone at such times.

'Are you sure she prefers it?' Alice ventured to ask. The girl gave her
a look of surprise.

'Why should mother say what she doesn't mean?'

It was uttered with an ingenuousness which threw some light on Rhoda's
character.

By nine o'clock the younger trio of sisters had gone to bed; Alice,
Virginia, and Gertrude sat in the parlour, occupied with books, from
time to time exchanging a quiet remark. A tap at the door scarcely drew
their attention, for they supposed it was the maid-servant coming to
lay supper. But when the door opened there was a mysterious silence;
Alice looked up and saw the expected face, wearing, however, so strange
an expression that she rose with sudden fear.

'Can I speak to you, please, miss?'

The dialogue out in the passage was brief. A messenger had just arrived
with the tidings that Dr. Madden, driving back from Kingston Seymour,
had been thrown from his vehicle and lay insensible at a roadside
cottage.

* * *

For some time the doctor had been intending to buy a new horse; his
faithful old roadster was very weak in the knees. As in other matters,
so in this, postponement became fatality; the horse stumbled and fell,
and its driver was flung head forward into the road. Some hours later
they brought him to his home, and for a day or two there were hopes
that he might rally. But the sufferer's respite only permitted him to
dictate and sign a brief will; this duty performed, Dr. Madden closed
his lips for ever.

CHAPTER II

ADRIFT

Just before Christmas of 1887, a lady past her twenties, and with a
look of discouraged weariness on her thin face, knocked at a house-door
in a little street by Lavender Hill. A card in the w