he Horsman family, reached the house, and, in
my absence, that same foolish housemaid had actually told Dora of them
point-blank. She said nothing, but presently the girl found her with
her teeth locked and eyes fixed in what looked like a convulsion, but
was in reality such suppressed hysteria as she had had before.

She soon came out of that attack, but was exceedingly ill all that
night and the next day, her recovery being altogether thrown back by
feverishness and loss of appetite; but, strange child that she was, she
never named Harold, nor let me speak of him. I think she instinctively
shrank from her own emotion, and had a kind of dread and jealous horror
of seeing anyone else grieve for him.

Dermot did not come the next day, but a note was brought me, left, the
servant said, by the gentleman in a cab. It told me that he felt so
ill that he thought it wisest to go at once to the smallpox hospital,
and find out whether it were the disease, or only vaccination and
fatigue. It was a brave unselfish resolve, full of the spirit he had
imbibed, and it was wise, for the illness was upon him already, the
more severe from his exhausted state and the shock he had undergone.
Mr. Randall Horsman, who was very kind, managed that I should hear of
him, and I knew he was going on fairly well, and not in any special
danger.

But oh! that time seems to me the most wretched that ever I passed, up
in those great London attic nurseries, where Dora and I were
prisoners--all winter fogginess, with the gas from below sending up its
light on the ceiling, and Dora never letting me sit still to grieve.
She could not bear the association or memory, I believe, and with the
imperious power of recovery used to keep me reading Mayne Reid's
storybooks to her incessantly, or else playing at backgammon. I hate
the sound of dice to this hour, and when I heard that unhappy French
criminals, the night before their execution, are apt to send for
Fenimore Cooper's novels, it seemed to reveal Dora's state of mind.

After two or three days, George Yolland came up to see me. He had been
to see Dermot, and gave me comfort as to his condition and the care
taken of him; but the chief cause of the visit was that they wanted my
authority for the needful destruction of whatever had been in that
room, and could not be passed through fire. Mr. Yolland had brought me
my Harold's big, well-worn pocket-book, which he said must undergo the
same doom, for t