e so glad you're able to come down!"

But when they had done exclaiming over her reappearance among them Lloyd
still remained as she was, her back against the door, standing very
straight, her hands at her side. She did not immediately reply. Heads
were turned in her direction. The talk fell away by rapid degrees as
they began to notice the paleness of her face and the strange, firm set
of her mouth.

"Sit down, Lloyd," said Miss Bergyn; "don't stand. You are not very well
yet; I'll have Rownie bring you a glass of sherry."

There was a silence. Then at length:

"No," said Lloyd quietly. "I don't want any sherry. I don't want any
supper. I came down to tell you that you are all wrong in thinking I did
what I could with my typhoid case at Medford. You think I left only
after the patient had died. I did not; I left before. There was a crisis
of some kind. I don't know what it was, because I was not in the
sick-room at the time, and I did not go when I was called. The doctor
was not there either; he had gone out and left the case in my charge.
There was nobody with the patient but a servant. The servant called me,
but I did not go. Instead I came away and left the house. The patient
died that same day. It is that that I wanted to tell you. Do you all
understand--perfectly? I left my patient at the moment of a crisis, and
with no one with him but a servant. And he died that same afternoon."

Then she went out, and the closing of the door jarred sharply upon the
great silence that had spread throughout the room.

Lloyd went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and, sinking
down upon the floor by the couch, bowed her head upon her folded arms.
But she was in no mood for weeping, and her eyes were dry. She was
conscious chiefly that she had taken an irrevocable step, that her head
had begun to ache. There was no exhilaration in her mind now; she did
not feel any of the satisfaction of attainment after struggle, of
triumph after victory. More than once she even questioned herself if,
after all, her confession had been necessary. But now she was weary unto
death of the whole wretched business. Now she only knew that her head
was aching fiercely; she did not care either to look into the past or
forward into the future. The present occupied her; for the present her
head was aching.

But before Lloyd went to bed that night Miss Bergyn knew the whole truth
as to what had happened at Dr. Pitts's house. The superintend