should be anxious and troubled when I have so sure a promise. I am not
strong. I suppose that makes a difference. But I _know_ all will come
out right."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE NIGHT GROWS DARKER.

But the thing which "might happen," and at the thought of which Christie
shuddered and turned pale, was not what Mr Sherwood supposed it to be.
It was not the natural shrinking from death which all must feel when it
is first impressed upon the mind not only that it is inevitable, but
that it is near. Christie knew that she was very ill. She knew that
she was not growing better, but rather worse. Yet it had never entered
into her mind that possibly she was to die soon. The dread that was
upon her was not the dread of death. I think if she had suddenly been
told that she was going to die, the tidings might have startled her,
because not anticipated; but believing, as she did, that death could not
separate her from her chief treasure, she would not have been afraid.
It was of something else that she was thinking, when she said to her
kind friend that Effie would be shocked if it came to pass.

She had awakened one day from a momentary slumber into which she had
fallen to hear some very terrible words spoken beside her. She thought
she had been dreaming till she heard them repeated, and then she opened
her eyes to see the kind faces of the attending physician and another
looking at her.

"You have been asleep," said one of them, kindly and Christie thought
again she must have been dreaming, for they spoke to her just as usual,
praising her patience and bidding her take courage, for she would soon
be well again. She must have been dreaming, she said to herself, twenty
times that day. Nothing so terrible as the dread that was upon her
could possibly be true; and yet the thought came back again and again.

"I am afraid she must lose it," she thought she heard one of them say.

"Yes; it looks like that now," as it seemed to her was the reply.

She could not forget the expression; and during the days and nights that
followed, the remembrance of the words came back, sometimes as a dream,
sometimes as a certainty. Had she been asleep, or was it true that she
must be a cripple all her life? Must she henceforth be helpless and
dependent, when her help was so much and in so many ways needed? Had
her terrible sufferings been all in vain? Were all these restless days
and nights only to have this sorrowful ending?