ain and again, always to be driven back in despair
before the crucial words were uttered. At last, with a desperate effort,
I seemed to shake off the incubus which was weighing me down, and I
finished the words triumphantly, and so loud that I had positively
wakened myself up _by shouting them out_. With returning memory I knew
this had happened, and hearing a door open and shut on the half landing
below my room, I thought for the moment that someone must have heard me,
and must be coming to see what was the matter. I looked at my
watch--just two-thirty A.M. No one appeared; and to my relief I
remembered that this was just the hour when either Miss Hunter or my
friend went round to the invalids, giving them milk or bovril, in the
night.

I had no inclination to seek out either of these ladies. The horror was
past, and no one could undo what I had endured; so I lay quiet, and in
course of time managed to go to sleep again, not waking until the
servant came into my room to light the fire at seven-thirty A.M.

It happened to be a certain _Minnie_ on this occasion, a very
respectable young woman, who had accompanied Miss Hunter when she gave
up the matronship of a well-known hospital, and who had therefore been
with her since this establishment had been started.

My night's experience convinced me so absolutely that, in spite of all
that had been said, the gentleman patient _had_ died in this room, and
that I had just gone through his death agonies, that instead of asking
any question about it, I said very quietly to Minnie, as she was on her
knees lighting my fire: "The poor gentleman who died here last summer
_died in this room, I find_."

"Yes, ma'am," she said quietly, not knowing, as it turned out, that any
mystery had been made about the fact.

My personal friend was guiltless of any deceit, for she had been told
the story about Laura Pearce's room, but the young girls confessed when
I went down to breakfast that they had been specially warned not to let
me know the true facts.

Miss Hunter did not appear at breakfast, as she was suffering from a
chill, so I went to her bedroom to say good-bye before going up to
London.

Feeling naturally annoyed and rather shaken by my night's experience, I
said to her rather drily:

"You need not have taken the trouble to deceive me about my room, Miss
Hunter, nor to warn the girls to do the same. I know that gentleman died
there, for I have just gone through his experienc