ircles, upon the white bed, upon the man's
brown, close curled hair, upon his handsome face--drawn and sharpened
by suffering--and its rather ghastly three days' growth of beard.

It fell, too, upon Katherine, as she sat facing her husband, the side
of her large easy-chair drawn up parallel to the side of the bed.

Silently, unlooked for, as a thief in the night, the end of Katherine's
fair world had come. There had been no time for forethought or
preparation. At one step she had been called upon to pass from the
triumph to the terror of mortal life. But she was a valiant creature;
and her natural courage was reinforced by the greatness of her love.
She met the blow standing, her brain clear, her mind strong to help.
Only once had she faltered--during the hideous hour when she waited,
pacing the dining-room in the dusk, four evenings back. For, after
consultation with Dr. Jewsbury and Mr. Thoms of Westchurch, John Knott
had told her--with a gentleness and delicacy a little surprising in so
hard-bitten a man--that, owing to the shattered condition of the bone,
amputation of the right leg was imperative. He added that, only too
probably, the left would have eventually to go too. They must operate,
he said, and operate immediately. Katherine had pleaded to be present;
but Dr. Knott was obdurate.

"My dear lady, you don't know what you ask," he said. "As you love him,
let him be. If you are there it will just double the strain. He'd
suffer for you as well as himself. Believe me he will be far best
alone."

It must be remembered that in 1842 anaesthetics had not robbed the
operating-room of half its horrors. The victim went to execution
wide-awake, with no mercy of deadened senses and dulled brain. And so
Katherine had paced the dining-room, hearing at intervals, through the
closed doors, the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, fearing she
heard more and worse sounds than those. They were hurting him, sorely,
sorely, dismembering and disfiguring the dear, living body which she
loved. A tempest of unutterable woe swept over her. Breaking fiercely
away from her brother and Denny--who strove to comfort her--she beat
her poor, lovely head against the wall. But that, so far, had been her
one moment of weakness. Since then she had fought steadily, with a
certain lofty cheerfulness, for the life she so desired to save. The
horror of the second operation had been spared her; but only because it
might but too probably hasten,