ed tight and
tighter under the folds of her blouse, and some second self within her
seemed to say:

"Suppose, suppose it should come, this thing I dread but dare not name,
what then, what then? Should I not expect it? Is it not almost a
certainty? Have I not been merely deceiving myself with the forlornest
hopes? Is it not the most reasonable course to expect the worst? Do not
all indications point that way? Has not my whole life been shaped to
this end? Was not this calamity, this mighty sorrow, prepared for me
even before I was born? And one can do nothing, absolutely nothing,
nothing, but wait and hope and fear, and eat out one's heart with
longing."

There was a knock at the door. Instead of calling to enter Lloyd went to
it softly and opened it a few inches. Mr. Campbell was there.

"They've come--Street and the assistant."

Lloyd heard a murmur of voices in the hall below and the closing of the
front door.

Farnham and Street went at once to the operating-room to make their
hands and wrists aseptic. Campbell had gone downstairs to his
smoking-room. It had been decided--though contrary to custom--that Lloyd
should administer the chloroform.

At length Street tapped with the handle of a scalpel on the door to say
that he was ready.

"Now, dear," said Lloyd, turning to Hattie, and picking up the ether
cone.

But the little girl's courage suddenly failed her. She began to plead in
a low voice choked with tears. Her supplications were pitiful; but
Lloyd, once more intent upon her work, every faculty and thought
concentrated upon what must be done, did not temporise an instant.
Quietly she gathered Hattie's frail wrists in the grip of one strong
palm, and held the cone to her face until she had passed off with a long
sigh. She picked her up lightly, carried her into the next room, and
laid her upon the operating-table. At the last moment Lloyd had busied
herself with the preparation of her own person. Over her dress she
passed her hospital blouse, which had been under a dry heat for hours.
She rolled her sleeves up from her strong white forearms with their
thick wrists and fine blue veining, and for upward of ten minutes
scrubbed them with a new nail-brush in water as hot as she could bear
it. After this she let her hands and forearms lie in the permanganate of
potash solution till they were brown to the elbow, then washed away the
stain in the oxalic-acid solution and in sterilised hot water. Street
and Far