ority, or
make him think it "worth while."

Then, looking deeper, he saw the mother in the child; and in Diana's
devotion, mysterious influences, flowing from her mother's fate--from
the agony, the sin, the last tremulous hope, and piteous submission of
Juliet Sparling. He perceived that in this broken, tortured happiness to
which Diana had given herself there was some sustaining or consoling
element that nothing more normal or more earthly would have brought her;
he guessed at spiritual currents and forces linking the dead with the
living, and at a soul heroically calm among them, sending forth rays
into the darkness. His religion, which was sincere, enabled him to
understand her; his affection, his infinite delicacy of feeling,
helped her.

Meanwhile, Diana and Lankester became the sustaining angels of a
stricken house. But not all their tenderness and their pity could, in
the end, do much for the two sufferers they tried to comfort. In
Oliver's case the spinal pain and disorganization increased, the
blindness also; Lady Lucy became steadily feebler and more decrepit. At
last all life was centred on one hope--the coming of a great French
specialist, a disciple of Charcot's, recommended by the English
Ambassador in Paris, who was an old friend and kinsman of Lady Lucy.

But before he arrived Diana took a resolution. She went very early one
morning to see Sir James Chide. He was afterward closeted with Lady
Lucy, and he went up to town the following day on Diana's business. The
upshot of it all was that on the morning of New Year's Eve a marriage
was celebrated in Oliver Marsham's room by the Rector of Tallyn and Mr.
Lavery. It was a wedding which, to all who witnessed it, was among the
most heart-rending experiences of life. Oliver, practically blind, could
not see his bride, and only morphia enabled him to go through it. Mrs.
Fotheringham was to have been present; but there was a feminist congress
in Paris, and she was detained at the last moment. The French specialist
came. He made a careful examination, but would give no decided opinion.
He was to stay a week at Tallyn in order to watch the case, and he
reserved his judgment. Meanwhile he gave certain directions as to local
treatment, and he asked that a new drug might be tried during the night
instead of the second dose of morphia usually given. The hearts of all
in charge of the invalid sank as they foresaw the inevitable struggle.

In the evening the new doct