y she reached one which
was darkened. A bed was there, on which lay a figure. The figure was
quite motionless; but her heart told her who this might be.

CHAPTER LIV.

NURSING THE SICK.

The figure that lay upon the bed as Hilda entered the room sent a
shock to her heart at the first glance. Very different was this one
from that tall, strong man who but lately, in all the pride of manly
beauty and matured strength, overawed her by his presence. What was
he now? Where now was all that virile force, and strong, resistless
nature, whose overmastering power she had experienced? Alas! but
little of it could be seen in this wasted and emaciated figure that
now lay before her, seemingly at the last verge of life. His features
had grown thin and attenuated, his lips were drawn tight over his
teeth, his face had the stamp of something like death upon it. He was
sleeping fitfully, but his eyes were only half closed. His thin, bony
hands moved restlessly about, and his lips muttered inarticulate
words from time to time. Hilda placed her hand on his forehead. It
was cold and damp. The cold sent a chill through every nerve. She
bent down low over him. She devoured him with her eyes. That face,
worn away by the progress of disease, that now lay unconscious, and
without a ray of intelligence beneath her, was yet to her the best
thing in all the world, and the one for which she would willingly
give up the world. She stooped low down. She pressed her lips to his
cold forehead. An instant she hesitated, and then she pressed her
lips this time to the white lips that were before her. The long,
passionate kiss did not wake the slumberer. He knew not that over him
was bending one who had once sent him to death, but who now would
give her own life to bring him back from that death to which she had
sent him.

Such is the change which can be worked in the basest nature by the
power of almighty love. Here it was made manifest. These lips had
once given the kiss of Judas. On this face of hers the Earl of
Chetwynde had gazed in horror; and these hands of hers, that now
touched tremblingly the brow of the sick man, had once wrought out on
him that which would never be made known. But the lips which once
gave the kiss of Judas now gave that kiss which was the outpouring of
the devotion of all her soul, and these hands were ready to deal
death to herself to rescue him from evil. She twined her arms around
his neck, and gazed at him as