ou go till I find out why
I was skipped."

Lloyd hurried at once to Miss Bergyn's room, indignant at this slight.
Surely, after what had happened, she was entitled to more consideration
than this. Of all the staff in the house she should have been the one to
be preferred.

Miss Bergyn rose at Lloyd's sudden entrance into her room, and to her
question responded:

"It was only because I wanted to spare you further trouble and--and
embarrassment, Lloyd, that I told Miss Douglass to take your place. This
call is from Medford. Dr. Pitts was here himself this morning, and he
thought as I did."

"Thought what? I don't understand."

"It seemed to me," answered the superintendent nurse, "that this one
case of all others would be the hardest, the most disagreeable for you
to take. It seems that Mr. Bennett has leased Dr. Pitts's house from
him. He is there now. At the time when Mr. Ferriss was beginning to be
ill Mr. Bennett was with him a great deal and undertook to nurse him
till Dr. Pitts interfered and put a professional nurse on the case.
Since then, too, the doctor has found out that Mr. Bennett has exposed
himself imprudently. At any rate, in some way he has contracted the same
disease and is rather seriously ill with it. Dr. Pitts wants us to send
him a nurse at once. It just happened that it was your turn, and I
thought I had better skip your name and send Louise Douglass."

Lloyd sank into a chair, her hands falling limply in her lap. A frown of
perplexity gathered on her forehead. But suddenly she exclaimed:

"I know--that's all as it may be; but all the staff know that it is my
turn to go; everybody in the house knows who is on call. How will it
be--what will be thought when it is known that I haven't gone--and
after--after my failing once--after this--this other affair? No, I must
go. I, of all people, must go--and just because it is a typhoid case,
like the other."

"But, Lloyd, how _can_ you?"

True, how could she? Her patient would be the same man who had
humiliated her and broken her, had so cruelly misunderstood and wronged
her, for whom all her love was dead. How could she face him again? Yet
how refuse to take the case? How explain a second failure to her
companions? Lloyd made a little movement of distress, clasping her hands
together. How the complications followed fast upon each other! No sooner
was one difficult situation met and disposed of than another presented
itself. Bennett was nothing to