hours, and still Sybella sat by her father's side watching and waiting.
It was already dusk, when a carriage stopped at the little gate and
Conway got out, and was quickly followed by another. "The doctor, at
last," muttered Sybella, gently moving from her place; and Kellett awoke
and looked at him.

Conway had barely time to whisper the name of the physician in Bella's
ear, when Sir Maurice Dashwood entered. There was none of the solemn
gravity of the learned doctor, none of the catlike stealthiness of the
fashionable practitioner, in his approach. Sir Maurice advanced like a
man entering a drawing-room before a dinner-party, easy, confident, and
affable. He addressed a few words to Miss Kellett, and then placing his
chair next her father's, said,--

"I hope my old brother officer does n't forget me. Don't you remember
Dashwood of the 43d?"

"The wildest chap in the regiment," muttered Kellett, "though he was the
surgeon. Did you know him, sir?"

"I should think I did," said the doctor, smiling; "he was a great chum
of yours, was n't he? You messed together in the Pyrenees for a whole
winter."

"A wild chap,--could never come to any good," went on Kellett to
himself. "I wonder what became of him."

"I can tell you, I think. Meanwhile, let me feel your pulse. No fixed
pain here," said he, touching the region of the heart. "Look fully at
me. Ah, it is there you feel it," said he, as he touched the other's
forehead; "a sense of weight rather than pain, isn't it?"

"It's like lead I feel it," said Kellett; "and when I lay it down, I
don't think I 'll ever be able to lift it up again."

"That you will, and hold it high too, Kellett," said the doctor, warmly.
"You must just follow my counsels for a day or two, and we shall see a
great change in you."

"I 'll do whatever you bid me, but it's no use, doctor; but I 'll do it
for her sake there." And the last words were in a whisper.

"That's spoken like yourself, Kellett," said the other, cheerily. "Now
let me have pen and ink."

As the doctor sat down to a table, he beckoned Bella to his side, and
writing a few words rapidly on the paper before him, motioned to her to
read them.

She grasped the chair as she read the lines, and it shook beneath her
hand, while an ashy pallor spread over her features.

"Ask him if I might have a little brandy-and-water, Bella," said the
sick man.

"To be sure you may," said Sir Maurice; "or, better still, a glass of
claret; a