aid Pam, trying to speak with
asperity, and failing miserably. "Mr. Oglethorpe is nothing to you. They
should have sent for Miss Gower at once."

But the fact was the little doctor had searched in vain for the exact
address of the lady whose letters he found in his patient's portmanteau,
when examining his papers to find some clue to the whereabouts of his
friends, and it was by the merest chance that he had discovered it in
the end from Theo's own lips, and so had secretly written to Broome
street, in his great respect and admiration for this pretty young nurse,
who was at once so youthful and indescribably innocent. In her trouble
and anxious excitement, Theo had not once thought of doing so herself,
until during the last two days, and now there was no necessity for the
action.

"And Mr. Oglethorpe," interposed Miss Gower.

"He is up-stairs," Theo answered. "The doctor thinks that perhaps he may
be saved by careful nursing. I did what I could," and she stopped with a
curious click in her throat.

The simple sight of Priscilla Gower, with her calm, handsome face, and
calm, handsome presence, set her so far away from him and she had seemed
so near to him during the few last days--she felt so poor and weak
through the contrast. And Pamela was right. She was nothing to him--he
was nothing to her. This was his wife who had come to him now, and
she--what was she?

She led them up-stairs to the sick-room, silently, and there left them.
It had actually never occurred to her to ask herself how it was that the
two were together. She was thinking only about Denis. She went to her
own little bedroom at the top of the house--such a poor, little bare
place as it was, as poor and bare as only a bedroom in a miserable
little French road-side inn can be--only the low, white bed in it, a
chair or two, and a barren toilet-table standing near the deep window.
This deep, square window was the only part of the room holding any
attraction for Theo. From it she could look out along the road, where
the lumbering stages made their daily appearance, and could see miles of
fields behind the hedges, and watch the peasant women in their wooden
sabots journeying on to the market towns. She flung herself down on the
bare floor, in the recess formed by the window, and folded her arms upon
its broad ledge. She looked out for a minute at the road, and the
fields, and the hedges, and then gave vent to a single, sudden desperate
sob. Nobody knew he