ng there, stricken and helpless.

Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and
brought Fraeulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men
brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God!
how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one
side, the skin livid.

'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.

'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear
grandmother, don't look at us like that!'

One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of
course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself
into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of
the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.

They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a
figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were
open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain.
Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright,
and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved
it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right
arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a
stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and
distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken
syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with
clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's
altered face.

Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He
did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the
situation with professional calmness.

'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the
symptoms.

'Will she die?' asked Mary.

'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall
bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I
think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin,
and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built
themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A
wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured
into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the
brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too
constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the