t what I have done? Show me the paltry pin-prick of
suffering that you place against my agony?"

"Hush!" he said, in a low tone, and glancing round warningly, evidently
taken aback by her sudden vehemence. "You mistake me. I wished merely
to remind you."

"Goad me, rather!" she retorted with unabated passion. "I forget! I
forget either the blood of the dead or the tortures of the living! I
forget the oath I swore with this in my hand!"

Her fingers had been restlessly plucking at the bosom of her gown, and
now she held out upon her open hand the tiny roll of red-marked paper.
She looked at it for a few moments with dilating eyes, while the color
died out of her face and left it impassive marble again. Then she
slowly restored the little roll to her breast and turned to the door.

"Come," she said. "I will show you."

CHAPTER VI.

Doctor Brudenell realized very often the fact that the life of a London
medical man, however large his practice and solvent his patients, is
not by any means an enviable one. Once upon a time, when a red lamp had
been a novelty, and the power to write "M. D." after his ordinary
signature a delicious dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy,
something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his
dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that
was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in
his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a
good many patients for a little more leisure.

This was particularly the case upon a hot, oppressive night a week
later, a night such as London generally experiences in August. It was
Saturday, and certainly it was not pleasant, after a week of fatiguing
work, to be summoned as soon as he had got into his bedroom, at
considerably past eleven o'clock at night, to attend a patient who
resided somewhere in the wilds of Holloway.

However, there was no help for it; and the Doctor, philosophically
resigning himself, and taking care to be sure that his latch-key was in
his pocket, spoke a word to Mrs. Jessop, as a precaution against that
worthy woman's putting up the chain of the hall door before she went to
bed, and let himself out. It was a fine night, hot as it was, with a
large bright moon hardly beginning to wane, and myriads of stars.
Doctor Brudenell, as good and quick a walker now as he had been twenty
years before, thought lightly of the distance between his o