tell you, your voice has gone, at any rate for a year."

"For a year!" The hoarse, angry, rusty whisper came forth from her,
and in spite of its hoarseness and rustiness was audible enough.

"I fear so. For heaven's sake don't talk; use your tablet." Rachel
drew the tablet from under her pillow and dashed it across the
room. The doctor picked it up, and, with a kind smile and a little
caressing motion of his hand, put it again back under the pillow.
Rachel buried her head amidst the bedclothes and sobbed bitterly.
"Try to make yourself happy in remembering how you have succeeded,"
said the doctor.

"It won't be back just the same," she wrote on her tablet.

"It is in God's hands," said the doctor. There came not another word
from Rachel, either by her tablet or by any struggle at speech. The
doctor, having made what attempts at comfort he could, went his way.
Then her father, who had been in and out constantly, came to his
daughter. He had not been present when she threw the tablet away, but
he knew what the doctor had said to her.

"My pet," he said. But she made no attempt to answer him. A year! At
her time of life a year is an eternity. And then this doctor had only
told her that her voice was in God's hands. She could talk to herself
without any effort. "When they say that they always condemn you.
When the doctor tells you that you are in God's hands he means the
Devil's."

She had been so near the gods and goddesses, and now she was no more
than any other poor woman. She might be less, as her face had begun
to wither with her voice. She had all but succeeded; as for her
face, as for the mere look of her, let it go. She told herself that
she cared nothing for her appearance. What was Lord Castlewell to
her,--what even was Frank's love? To stand on the boards of the
theatre and become conscious of the intense silence of the crowd
before her,--so intense because the tone of her voice was the one
thing desired by all the world. And then to open her mouth and to let
the music go forth and to see the ears all erect, as she fancied she
could, so that not a sound should be lost,--should not be harvested
by the hungry hearers! That was to be a very god! As she told herself
of all her regrets, there was not a passing sorrow given to Lord
Castlewell. And what of the other man? "Oh, Frank, dear Frank, you
will know it all now. There need be no more taking money." But she
did take some comfort at last in that promise o