shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the
support of the habitual taken from her, a stranger in a strange land,
liked the man. He appeared so admirable an example of physical health.
He inspired her with confidence, his presence seeming to carry with it
assurance of that which is wholesome, normal, and sane. He glanced at
her sharply, not without hint of criticism and of command.
Authoritatively he signed to her to remain silent, to stand at the head
of the bed, and well clear of it, out of sight. Katherine did not
resent this. She obeyed.

And standing thus, rallying her will to conscious effort, she looked
steadily, for the first time, at the bed and that which lay upon it.
And so doing she could hardly save herself from falling, since she saw
there precisely that which the shape of the room and the disarray of
it, along with vacant space and the low camp-bed in the centre of that
space, had foretold--for all her dumbness of feeling, deadness of
sympathy--she must assuredly see.--All these last four-and-twenty hours
she had solaced herself with the phantom society of Dickie the
baby-child, of Dickie the eager boy, curious of many things. But here
was one different from both these. Different, too, from the young man,
tremendous in arrogance, and in revolt against the indignity put on him
by fate, from whom she had parted in such anguish of spirit nearly five
years back. For, in good truth, she saw now, not Richard Calmady her
son, her anxious charge, whose debtor--in that she had brought him into
life disabled--she held herself eternally to be, but Richard Calmady
her husband, the desire of her eyes, the glory of her youth--saw him,
worn by suffering, disfigured by unsightly growth of beard, pallid,
racked by mortal weakness, the sheet expressing the broad curve of his
chest, the sheet and light blanket disclosing the fact of that hideous
maiming he had sustained--saw him now as on the night he died.

Captain Vanstone, meanwhile reassured as to the newcomer's discretion
and docility, applied his mind to his patient.

"See here, sir," he said, banteringly yet tenderly, "we were just
getting along first-rate with these uncommonly mixed liquors. You
mustn't cry off again, Sir Richard."

He slipped his arm under the pillows, dexterously raising the young
man's head, and held the cup to his lips.

"My dear good fellow, I wish you would let me be," Dickie murmured.

He spoke courteously, yet there were tea