iastically, "you can't confess
it. But I know you are capable of such a thing--of anything heroic!
Do forgive me," she said, seizing Grace's hand. She held it a moment,
gazing with a devouring fondness into her face, which she stooped a
little sidewise to peer up into. Then she quickly dropped her hand, and,
whirling away, glided slimly out of the corridor.

Grace softly opened Mrs. Maynard's door, and the sick woman opened her
eyes. "I was n't asleep," she said hoarsely, "but I had to pretend to
be, or that woman would have killed me."

Grace went to her and felt her hands and her flushed forehead.

"I am worse this evening," said Mrs. Maynard.

"Oh, no," sighed the girl, dropping into a chair at the bedside, with
her eyes fixed in a sort of fascination on the lurid face of the sick
woman.

"After getting me here," continued Mrs. Maynard, in the same low, hoarse
murmur, "you might at least stay with me a little. What kept you so
long?"

"The wind fell. We were becalmed."

"We were not becalmed the day I went out with Mr. Libby. But perhaps
nobody forced you to go."

Having launched this dart, she closed her eyes again with something more
like content than she had yet shown: it had an aim of which she could
always be sure.

"We have heard from Mr. Maynard," said Grace humbly. "There was a
despatch waiting for Mr. Libby at Leyden. He is on his way."

Mrs. Maynard betrayed no immediate effect of this other than to say, "He
had better hurry," and did not open her eyes.

Grace went about the room with a leaden weight in every fibre, putting
the place in order, and Mrs. Maynard did not speak again till she
had finished. Then she said, "I want you to tell me just how bad Dr.
Mulbridge thinks I am."

"He has never expressed any anxiety," Grace began, with her inaptness at
evasion.

"Of course he has n't," murmured the sick woman. "He isn't a fool! What
does he say?"

This passed the sufferance even of remorse. "He says you mustn't talk,"
the girl flashed out. "And if you insist upon doing so, I will leave
you, and send some one else to take care of you."

"Very well, then. I know what that means. When a doctor tells you not to
talk, it's because he knows he can't do you any good. As soon as George
Maynard gets here I will have some one that can cure me, or I will know
the reason why." The conception of her husband as a champion seemed to
commend him to her in novel degree. She shed some tears, and after a