for
a moment or two, Patty asked the required questions; prefacing them with
some words of explanation which drew from the tobacconist's wife many
voluble expressions of sympathy and admiration for Madonna. At last,
there came to an end; and the desired answers to the questions on the
slate were readily given enough, and duly, though rather slowly, written
down by Patty, for her young lady's benefit. The sitting-room belonging
to Mr. Thorpe and the other gentleman, was the front room on the first
floor. Nobody was in it now. Would the lady like to be shown--

Here Madonna arrested the servant's further progress with the
slate pencil--nodded to indicate that she understood what had been
written--and then, with her little packet of money ready in her hand,
lightly ran up the first flight of stairs; ascending them so quickly
that she was on the landing before Patty and the landlady had settled
which of the two ought to have officially preceded her.

The front room was indeed empty when she entered it, but one of the
folding doors leading into the back room had been left ajar; and when
she looked towards the opening thus made, she also looked, from the
particular point of view she then occupied, towards the head of the bed
on which Zack lay, and saw his face turned towards her, hushed in deep,
still, breathless sleep.

She started violently--trembled a little--then stood motionless, looking
towards him through the door; the tears standing thick in her eyes,
the color gone from her cheeks, the yearning pulses of grief and
pity beating faster and faster in her heart. Ah! how pale and wan and
piteously still he lay there, with the ghastly white bandages round
his head, and one helpless, languid hand hanging over the bedside! How
changed from that glorious creature, all youth, health, strength, and
exulting activity, whom it had so long been her innocent idolatry to
worship in secret! How fearfully like what might be the image of him in
death, was the present image of him as he lay in his hushed and awful
sleep! She shuddered as the thought crossed her mind, and drying the
tears that obscured her sight, turned a little away from him, and looked
round the room. Her quick feminine eyes detected at a glance all
its squalid disorder, all its deplorable defects of comfort, all its
repulsive unfitness as a habitation for the suffering and the sick.
Surely a little money might help Zack to a better place to recover in!
Surely _her_