him before; and,
matching her force against his force, her obstinacy against his
strength--the strength that would pull the life from her grasp--her
sleepless vigilance against his stealth, her intelligence against his
cunning, her courage against his terrors, her resistance against his
attack, her skill against his strategy, her science against his
world-old, worldwide experience, win the fight, save the life, hold firm
against his slow, resistless pull and triumph again, if it was only for
the day.

Succeed she would and must. Her inborn obstinacy, her sturdy refusal to
yield her ground, whatever it should be, her stubborn power of
resistance, her tenacity of her chosen course, came to her aid as she
drew swiftly near to the spot whereon the battle would be fought.
Mentally she braced herself, holding back with all her fine,
hard-tempered, native strength. No, she would not yield the life to the
Enemy; no, she would not give up; no, she would not recede. Let the
Enemy do his worst--she was strong against his efforts.

At Medford, which she reached toward four in the afternoon, after an
hour's ride from the City, she found a conveyance waiting for her, and
was driven rapidly through streets bordered with villas and closely
shaven lawns to a fair-sized country seat on the outskirts of the town.
The housekeeper met her at the door with the information that the doctor
was, at the moment, in the sick-room, and had left orders that the nurse
should be brought to him the moment she arrived. The housekeeper showed
Lloyd the way to the second landing, knocking upon the half-open door at
the end of the hall, and ushering her in without waiting for an answer.

Lloyd took in the room at a glance--the closely drawn curtains, the
screen between the bed and the windows, the doctor standing on the
hearth-rug, and the fever-inflamed face of the patient on the pillow.
Then all her power of self-repression could not keep her from uttering a
smothered exclamation.

For she, the woman who, with all the savage energy of him, Bennett
loved, had, at peril of her life, come to nurse Bennett's nearest
friend, the man of all others dear to him--Richard Ferriss.

VI.

Two days after Dr. Pitts had brought Ferriss to his country house in the
outskirts of Medford he had been able to diagnose his sickness as
typhoid fever, and at once had set about telegraphing the fact to
Bennett. Then it had occurred to him that he did not know whe