ere was unflagging
work to be done. The Red Cross Nurse was a capable, swiftly moving
woman, with her resources at her finger's ends, and her quick wits about
her. Almost immediately two doctors from the staff, in charge of the
rooms upstairs were on the spot and at work with her. By what
lightning-flashed sentences she conveyed to them, without pausing for a
second, the facts it was necessary for them to know, was
incomprehensible to Coombe, who could only stand afar off and wait,
watching the dead face. Its sunken temples, cheeks and eyes, and the
sharply carven bone outline were heart gripping.

It seemed hours before one of the doctors as he bent over the couch
whispered,

"The breathing is a little better--"

It was not possible that he should be moved, but the couch was broad and
deeply upholstered and could be used temporarily as a bed. Every
resource of medical science was within reach. Nurse Jones, who had been
on her way home to take a rest, was so far ensnared by unusual interest
that she wished to be allowed to remain on duty. There were other nurses
who could be called on at any moment of either night or day. There were
doctors of indisputable skill who were also fired by the mere histrionic
features of the case. The handsome, fortunate young fellow who had been
supposed torn to fragments had by some incomprehensible luck been aided
to drag himself home--perhaps to die of pure exhaustion.

Was it really hours before Coombe saw the closed eyes weakly open? But
the smile was gone and they seemed to be looking at something not in
the room.

"They will come--in," the words dragged out scarcely to be heard.
"Jackson--said--said--they--would." The eyes dropped again and the
breathing was a mere flutter.

Nurse Jones was in fact filled with much curiosity concerning and
interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained
person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way "loved
a lord." If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her
eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man
who--keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge of the
seemingly almost dead boy--still would not leave the room, and watched
him with a restrained passion of such feeling as it was not natural to
see in the eyes of men. Marquis or not he had gone through frightful
things in his life and this boy meant something tremendous to him. If he
couldn't be bro