pon the nerve centre, and sapping
the foundations of life.

For many weeks there seemed no hope of rescue, and two physicians,
distinguished by skill and success in their profession, finally
admitted that they were powerless to cope with this typhoid serpent,
whose tightening folds were gradually strangling her.

At length most unexpectedly, when science laid down its weapons to
watch the close of the struggle, and nature the Divine Doctor quietly
took up the gage of battle, the tide of conflict turned. Slowly the
numbed brain began to exert its force, the fluttering thready pulse
grew calmer, and one day the dreamer awoke to the bitter
consciousness of a renewal of all the galling burden of woes which
the tireless law of compensation had for those long weeks mercifully
loosed and lifted.

Although guarded with tender care by the faithful pair, who had
followed her across the Atlantic, she convalesced almost
imperceptibly, and out of her busy life two months fruitful alone in
bodily pain glided away to the silent grey of the past.

Dimly conscious that days and weeks were creeping by unimproved, she
retained in subsequent years only a dreamy reminiscence of the period
dating from the moment when she essayed to utter the last words of
Queen Katherine, words which ran zigzag, hither and thither like an
electric thread through the leaden cloud of her delirium, to the
hour, when with returning strength, keen goading thrusts from the
unsheathed dagger of memory, told her that the Sleeping Furies had
once more been aroused on the threshold of the temple of her life.

Noticing some rare hothouse flowers in a vase upon the table near her
bed, Mrs. Waul hastened to explain to the invalid that every other
day during her illness, bouquets had been brought to their hotel by
the servant of some American gentleman, who was anxious to receive
constant tidings of Mrs. Orme's condition, adding that the physicians
had forbidden her to keep the flowers in the sick-room, until all
danger seemed passed. No card had been attached, no name given, and
by the sufferer none was needed. Gazing at the superb heart's-ease,
whose white velvet petals were enamelled with scarlet, purple, and
gold, the mockery stung her keenly, and with a groan she turned away,
hiding her face on the pillow. Hearts-ease from the man who had
bruised, trampled, broken her heart? She instructed Mrs. Waul to
decline receiving the bouquet when next the messenger came,