absolutely quiet--your life depends upon it."
She looked up tremulously.
"I don't care--a--cent _now_," she whispered.
She bore the journey to Cecil Street better than they could hope, and
the bleeding from the lungs had ceased.
Downstairs Saidie expressed a wish to remain all night with her
sister.
"She ought not to be left," she said.
"Most decidedly she must not be left," replied Sir John--"I intend
remaining with your sister."
"You! Well, this beats all, upon my word!"
So great was Miss Blackall's surprise that when she found herself
ousted from the position of head nurse and the door metaphorically
closed upon her, she had not a word to say, but called a hansom and
had herself driven to Bayswater, where she had been living since her
mother's death, now nearly a year ago.
"And I used to think he didn't amount to a row of pins," she murmured
with an odd sort of penitence. "Well, I guess I was wrong, that's
all."
Through the long hours of that never-ending night John Chetwynd
watched by Bella's bedside. For the most part, she lay mute and
inert, but towards morning she grew restless.
"I must talk," she cried excitedly--"to see you sit there and to
think--to remember--oh! if only I had run straight, Jack--I don't
think I was meant for this, do you?"
He had no words with which to answer her. He folded his arms across
his chest and looked out vaguely into the slant of room beyond. The
folding doors were open and on the sideboard he could see a basket
full of peaches, at this season an extravagance denied his own table.
On the mantelshelf to his right hand were some exquisite hot-house
flowers, carelessly crushed into a cracked, cheap little vase, and a
penny packet of stationery and a powder puff in a sprinkling of
chalk.
She stretched out her arms so that her fingers touched him, and he
held them tightly in his own--rings and all.
She was never meant for the life she had chosen!
His heart felt breaking.
The delicate features, the sweet, wistful, childish face, the pathos
in her regretful cry--the past with its load of gall and shame and
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