ow serious the
matter was."

She could not believe she had heard aright.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean that in shouting out the word 'accident' as you did and then
dashing out of the room, you may easily have caused Sir Charles a shock
which in his condition was sufficient to bring on this relapse. From
your manner he may have thought some really grave catastrophe had
overtaken his son. It is quite possible that you are directly
responsible for his state now."

She stared at him, speechless. How could he wilfully distort facts in
this barefaced way? It seemed a revelation of some incredible
pettiness of character hitherto unsuspected in him. When she found her
voice she spoke evenly, with perfect self-control.

"I think, doctor, you will have a hard job of it trying to pin this on
_me_," she replied, and left him.

She knew that his eyes followed her, and that during the rest of the
afternoon he glanced at her often, as if he did not know how to
construe her momentary defiance, but she was indifferent to what he
thought. She knew that at this late date he would not risk a change of
nurses, and that was enough for her. Her only concern was for her
patient.

Before evening everyone was aware that Sir Charles, whom they had
believed to be out of danger, had suffered a severe relapse.
Depression lay like a pall on the household. Lady Clifford fidgeted
about from one room to another aimlessly. Roger smoked endless
cigarettes.

"Do you think the doctor could have foreseen this?" Miss Clifford
inquired of Esther about night-fall. "You remember how he warned us
last night against being too hopeful."

"He couldn't possibly have guessed it! No one could. The whole thing
has come out of the blue. I can't think how to account for it. If he
had been given anything to eat, solid food, or--but no, that is simply
out of the question."

The more Esther thought of it the more utterly she was mystified. The
affair was inexplicable. She scorned to consider for a moment the
doctor's absurd attempt to accuse her, having seen the old man weather
a storm infinitely worse.

When, tired and dispirited, she went to her room that night, she
fancied, on opening the door, that a faint odour of tobacco greeted
her--the doctor's strong Algerian tobacco.

"That wretched man is getting on my nerves," she murmured under her
breath. "I couldn't possibly smell cigarette smoke here, the door has
been closed all da