ss Harry! Come
quick!" sent her on flying feet down the stairs again. Isabella, whom
she had thought unconscious, had risen and tottered to the kitchen.
There the maid, rushing on from the empty dining-room, had found her
beside the sink with a bottle of carbolic acid upraised, ready to pour
down her throat. Delia had struck it from her hand barely in time to
save her from all but a chance burn upon her cheek.

"She must have had some sudden and very serious shock," said the
physician later, as he and Henrietta stood beside the bed where
Isabella lay, at last sleeping quietly but moaning in her slumber.
"Her second attempt to kill herself shows how profound it must have
been. But she will come through all right now, I think, though her
recovery will perhaps be slow. What she will need more than anything
else will be to talk, and as soon as it is prudent you must persuade
her to confide in you and tell you the whole story of whatever it was
that led her to take this violent measure. Her nature is one that
needs sympathy and support, now far more than ever, and the sooner she
can be led to pour out all her trouble the sooner she will be able to
get her grip on life again. But of course you'll keep all the
knowledge of it that you can away from your mother. You'll have to use
your own discretion about that. She's had a pretty severe shock, too,
and, though she was getting on so well, it's likely to set her back a
good deal."

For days Isabella lay in her bed, like a broken, withered flower,
weeping much and asking between her sobs why they had not let her die.
But at last her sister's love and tender, persistent effort broke
through the wrappings of grief and shame that had kept her bound in
silence and in Henrietta's arms she sobbed out the pitiful tale that
had come to so tragic an ending.

"Oh, Harry," she said, "I can't understand why this awful thing should
have happened when I meant no harm at all. I can't see yet that there
was anything wrong in my going out with Mr. Brand now and then. It
wasn't many times, you know, and always he had some business errand
and just stopped for me to give me a little pleasure and to have some
company himself. I suppose he liked to have me go with him because I
was always jolly and kept him in good spirits. For I did notice,
Harry, that when he came he always seemed rather blue and anxious, and
then, after we had been out for a while and I had laughed and
chattered a lot, he would