Mary had spent the evening very anxiously. The formless future was a terror that she could not banish; she could evolve no definite line of action to sustain a hope.

She awoke from a troubled sleep with a startled sense of something having happened. After a few seconds, the cause was repeated. The silence was broken by the jangling of a bell, and nervous investigation proved it to be Mrs. Kincaid\'s.

The old lady explained that she was feeling very unwell—an explanation that was corroborated by her voice—and, striking a light, Mary saw that she was shivering violently.

"I can\'t stop it; and I\'m so cold. I don\'t know what it is; it\'s like cold water running down my back."

Her companion looked at her quickly. "We\'ll put some more blankets on the bed. Wait a minute while I run upstairs!"

She returned with the bedclothes from her own room.

"You\'ll be much warmer before long," she said; "you must have taken a slight chill."

Mrs. Kincaid lay mute awhile.

"I\'ve such a pain!" she murmured. "How could I have taken a chill?"

"Where is your pain?"

"In my side—a sharp, stabbing pain."

The servant appeared now, alarmed by the disturbance, and Mary told her to bring some coals, and then to dress herself as speedily as she could.

"Is there any linseed? Or oatmeal will do. I must make a poultice."

"I\'ll see, miss. There\'s some linseed, I think, but——"

"Fetch it, and a kettle. We\'ll light the fire at once; then I can make it up here."

The old lady moaned and shivered by turns; and some difficulty was experienced in getting the fire to burn. Mary held a newspaper before it, and the servant advanced theories on the subject of the chimney.

At last, when it was possible for the poultice to be applied, Mary sent her down for a hot-water bottle and the whisky.

"You\'ll be quite comfortable directly," she said to the invalid. "Something warm to drink, and the hot flannel to your feet \'ll make a lot of difference."

"So cold I am, it\'s bitter—and the pain! I can\'t think what it can be."

"Let me put this on for you, then; it\'s all ready. It won\'t—is that it?... There! How\'s that?"

"Oh!" faltered Mrs. Kincaid, "oh, thank you! Ah! you do it very nicely."

"See, here we have the rest of the luxuries!" She mixed the stimulant, and took it to her. "Just raise your head," she murmured; "I\'ll hold the glass for you, so that you won\'t have to sit up. Take this, now, and while you\'re sipping it, Ellen will get the bottle ready."

"There isn\'t much in the kettle," said Ellen. "I don\'t——"

"Use what there is, and fill it up again. Then see if you can find me any brown paper."

In quest of brown paper, Ellen was gone some time; and, having set down the empty tumbler and made the bed tidier, Mary proceeded to search for some herself.

She found a sheet lining a drawer, and rolling it into the form of a tube, fixed it to the kettle spout, to direct the steam into the room. She had not long done so when the girl returned disconsolate to say there was no brown paper in the house. Mary drew her outside.

"Are you going to sit in there all night, miss?"

"Speak lower! Yes, I shall sit up. What time is it?"

The girl said that she had just been astonished to see by the kitchen clock that it was half-past four; it had seemed to her that she had not long fallen asleep when the bell rang.

"I want you to go and fetch Dr. Kincaid, Ellen; I\'m afraid Mrs. Kincaid is going to be ill."

"Do you mean I\'m to go at once?"

"Yes. Tell him his mother isn\'t well, and it would be better for him to see her. Bring him back with you. You aren\'t frightened to go out—it must be getting light?"

They drew up the blind of the landing window, and saw daylight creeping over the next-door yard.

"Do you think she\'s going to be very bad, miss?"

"I don\'t know; I can\'t tell. Hurry, Ellen, there\'s a good girl! get back as quickly as you can!"

A deep flush had overspread the face on the pillow. The eyes yearned, and an agonised expression strengthened Mary\'s belief in the gravity of the seizure; she feared it to be the beginning of inflammation of the lungs. Three-quarters of an hour must be allowed for Kincaid to arrive, and, conscious that she could now do nothing but wait, the time lagged dreadfully. The silence, banished at the earlier pealing of the bell, had regained its dynasty, and once more a wide hush settled upon the house, indicated by the occasional clicking of a cinder on the fender. At intervals the sick woman uttered a tremulous sigh, and met Mary\'s gaze with a look of appeal, as if she recognised in her presence a kind of protective sympathy; but she had ceased to complain, and the watcher abstained from any active demonstration. In the globe beside the mirror the gas flared brightly, and this, coupled with the heat of the fire, filled the room with a moist radiance, against which the narrow line of dawn above the window-sill grew slowly more defined. The advent had been long expected, when sharp footfalls on the pavement smote Mary\'s ear, and, forgetting that Kincaid had his own key, she sprang up to let him in. The hall-door swung back, and she paused with her hand on the banisters. He came swiftly forward and passed her with a hurried salutation on the stairs.

There was, however, no anxiety visible on his face as he approached the bed. Merely a little genial concern was to be seen. His questions were put encouragingly; when a reply was given, he listened with an air of confidence confirmed.

"Am I very ill?" she gasped.

"You feel very ill, I dare say, dear; but don\'t go persuading yourself you are, or that\'ll be a real trouble!"

His fingers were on her pulse, and he was smiling as he spoke. Yet he knew that her life was in danger. The worthiest acting is done where there is no applause—it is the acting of a clever medical man in a sick-room.

Mary stood on the threshold watching him.

"Who put that funnel on the kettle?" he inquired, without turning. He had not appeared to notice it.

"I did," she answered. "Am I to take it off?"

"No."

He signed to her to go below, and after a few minutes followed her into the parlour.

"Give me a pen and ink, Miss Brettan, please."

"I\'ve put them ready for you," she said.

He wrote hastily, and rose with the prescription held out.

"Where\'s Ellen?"

"Here, waiting to take it."

A trace of surprise escaped him. He said curtly:

"You\'re thoughtful. Was it you who put on that poultice?"

Her tone was as distant as his.

"We did all we could before you came; I put on the poultice. Did I do right?"

"Quite right. I asked because of the way it was put on."

With that expression of approval he left her and returned to his mother. Mary, unable to complete her toilette, not knowing from minute to minute when she might be called, occupied herself in righting the disorder of the room. She had thrown on a loosely-fitting morning dress of cashmere, one of the first things that she had made after she was installed here. An instant; she had snatched to dip her face in water, but she had been able to do little to her hair, the coil of which still retained much of the scattered; softness of the night, and after Ellen came back from the chemist\'s she sent her upstairs for some; hairpins. She stood on the hearth, before the looking-glass, shaking the mass of hair about her shoulders, and then with uplifted arms winding it deftly on her head. The supple femininity of the attitude, so suggestive of recent rising, harmonised with the earliness of the sunshine that tinged the parlour; and when Kincaid reentered and found her so, he could not but be sensible of the impression, though he was indisposed to dwell upon it.

She looked round quickly:

"How is Mrs. Kincaid, doctor?"

"I\'m very uneasy about her. I\'m going back to the hospital now to arrange to stay here."

"What do you think has caused it?"

"I\'m afraid she got damp and cold in the garden on Sunday."

"And it has gone to the lungs?"

"It has affected the left lung, yes."

She dropped the last hairpin, and as she stooped for it the swirl of the gown displayed a bare instep.

"I can help to nurse her, unless you\'d rather send someone else?"

"You\'ll do very well, I think," he said; and he proceeded to give her some instructions.

She fulfilled these instructions with a capability he found astonishing. Before the day had worn through he perceived that, however her training had been acquired, he possessed in her a coadjutrix reliable and adroit. To herself, she was once more within her native province, but to him it was as if she had become suddenly voluble in a foreign tongue. He had no inclination to meditate upon her skill—to meditate about her was the last thing that he desired now—but there were moments when her performance of some duty supplied fresh food for wonder notwithstanding, and he noted her dexterity with curious eyes. He had, though, refrained from any further praise. The gratitude that he might have spoken was checked by the aloofness of her manner; and, in the closer association consequent upon the illness, the formality that had sprung up between them suffered no decrease. Indeed it became permanent in this contact, which both would have shunned.

After the one scene in which she left the choice to him, she had afforded him no chance to resume their earlier relations had he wished it, and the studied politeness of her address was a persistent reminder that she directed herself to him in his medical capacity alone. She held the present conditions the least exacting attainable, since the distastefulness of renewed intercourse was not to be avoided altogether; but she in nowise exonerated him for imposing them, and she considered that by having done so he had made her a singularly ungracious return for the humiliation of her avowal. She sustained the note he had struck; the key was in a degree congenial to her. But she resented while she concurred, and even more than to her judgment her acquiescence was attributable to her pride.

On the day following there were recurrences of pain, but on Wednesday this subsided, though the temperature remained high. Mary saw that his anxiety was, if anything, keener than it had been, and by degrees a latent admiration began to mingle with her bitterness. In the atmosphere of the sick-room the man and the woman were equally new to each other, and up to a certain point he was as great a surprise to her as was she to him. She saw him now professionally for the first time, and she recognised his resources, his despatch, with an appreciation quickened by experience. The visitor whom she had known lounging, loose-limbed and conversational, in an arm-chair had disappeared; the suppliant for a tenderness that she did not feel had become an authority whom she obeyed. Here, like this, the man was a power, and the change within him had its physical expression. His figure was braced, his movements had a resolution and a vigour that gave him another personality. He even awed her slightly. She thought that he must look more masterful to all the world in the exercise of his profession, but she thought also that everyone in the world would approve the difference.

The confidence that he inspired in her was so strong that on Thursday, when he told her that he intended to have a consultation, she heard him with a shock.

"You think it advisable?"

"I fear the worst, Miss Brettan; I can\'t neglect any chance."

She had some violets in her hand—it was her custom to brighten the view from the bed as much as she could every morning—and suddenly their scent was very strong.

"The worst?"

"God grant my opinion\'s wrong!" he said. "Will you ask the girl to take the wire for me?"

It was to a physician in the county town he had decided to telegraph, one whose prestige was gradually widening, and whose reputation had been built on something trustier than a chance summons to the couch of a notability. Mary had heard the name before, and she strove to persuade herself that his view of the case might prove more promising. The day that had opened so gloomily, however, offered during the succeeding hours small food for faith. Towards noon the sufferer became abruptly restless, and the united efforts of doctor and nurse were required to soothe her. She was fired by a passionate longing to get ............