ave been here long enough to understand him better than we can."

And down together they went; and the first thing that met their eyes as
they entered the sick-room, was Oglethorpe, sitting up in bed, with wild
eyes, haggard and fever-mad, struggling with his attendants, who were
trying to hold him down, and raving aloud in the old strain Theo had
heard so often.

"Why, Theo, my beauty, there are tears in your eyes. Good-by! Yes!
Forgive me! Forget me, and good-by! For God's sake, Priscilla, forgive
me!"

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT COMES OF IT ALL.

The hardest professional trouble the shrivelled little French doctor
had, perhaps, ever encountered, was the sight of the white, woe-stricken
young face, turned up to his when Theodora North followed him out of the
chamber upon the landing that night, and caught his arm in both her
clinging hands.

"He will die now, doctor," she said, in an agonized whisper. "He will
die now; I saw it in your face when you let his hand drop."

It would have been a hard-hearted individual who would have told the
exact truth in the face of these beautiful, agonized eyes--and the
little doctor was anything but hard of heart.

He patted the clinging hands quite affectionately, feeling in secret
great apprehension, yet hiding his feelings admirably.

"My little mademoiselle," he said (the tall young creature at his side
was almost regal, head and shoulders above him in height). "My dear
little Mademoiselle Theodora, this will not do. If you give way, I shall
give way too. You must help me--we must help each other, as we have been
doing. It is you only who can save him--it is you he calls for. You must
hope with me until some day when he awakes to know us, and then I shall
show you to him, and say, 'here is the beautiful young mademoiselle who
saved you.' And then we shall see, Miss Theodora--then we shall see what
a charm those words will work."

But she did not seem to be comforted, as he expected she would be.

"No," she said. "The time will never come when you can say that to him.
If he is ever well enough to know me, I must go away, and no one must
tell him I have been here."

Monsieur, the doctor, looked at her over his spectacles, sharply.

The pale face at once touched and suggested to him the outline of a
little romance--and he had all a Frenchman's sympathy for
romance--monsieur, the doctor. It was _une grande passion_, was it, and
this tractable, beautiful young creature