room, but I could plainly remark the doctor
was too much alarmed to make any serious resistance on this occasion.

The poor suffering lady was past knowing any one about her. She seemed
to take her friends for enemies. When the Count approached her bedside
her eyes, which had been wandering incessantly round and round the room
before, settled on his face with a dreadful stare of terror, which I
shall remember to my dying day. The Count sat down by her, felt her
pulse and her temples, looked at her very attentively, and then turned
round upon the doctor with such an expression of indignation and
contempt in his face, that the words failed on Mr. Dawson's lips, and
he stood for a moment, pale with anger and alarm--pale and perfectly
speechless.

His lordship looked next at me.

"When did the change happen?" he asked.

I told him the time.

"Has Lady Glyde been in the room since?"

I replied that she had not. The doctor had absolutely forbidden her to
come into the room on the evening before, and had repeated the order
again in the morning.

"Have you and Mrs. Rubelle been made aware of the full extent of the
mischief?" was his next question.

We were aware, I answered, that the malady was considered infectious.
He stopped me before I could add anything more.

"It is typhus fever," he said.

In the minute that passed, while these questions and answers were going
on, Mr. Dawson recovered himself, and addressed the Count with his
customary firmness.

"It is NOT typhus fever," he remarked sharply. "I protest against this
intrusion, sir. No one has a right to put questions here but me. I
have done my duty to the best of my ability--"

The Count interrupted him--not by words, but only by pointing to the
bed. Mr. Dawson seemed to feel that silent contradiction to his
assertion of his own ability, and to grow only the more angry under it.

"I say I have done my duty," he reiterated. "A physician has been sent
for from London. I will consult on the nature of the fever with him,
and with no one else. I insist on your leaving the room."

"I entered this room, sir, in the sacred interests of humanity," said
the Count. "And in the same interests, if the coming of the physician
is delayed, I will enter it again. I warn you once more that the fever
has turned to typhus, and that your treatment is responsible for this
lamentable change. If that unhappy lady dies, I will give my testimony
in a court of just