"How is that?" questioned the busy doctor. "Oh, your wife, my good fellow? The very thing. Let her come at once." So Dyce came, and into her sympathetic ears were poured the delirious ravings of the lonely heart which had been so suddenly torn from its genial surroundings of love and happiness and thrust into the chilling atmosphere of misunderstanding and neglect. Every day the patient grew weaker and after each visit the doctor looked graver. Mrs. Hildreth began to feel the gnawings of remorse, as she thought of the lonely girl to whom she had so coldly refused a daughter's place; and the Judge's thoughts grew unbearable as he remembered his broken trust; even Louis missed the earnest face which he had grown to watch with a curious sense of pleasure; while the girls at school felt their hearts grow warm as they thought of the young cousin so soon to pass through the valley of the shadow. But Evadne did not die. The fever spent itself at last and there followed long days of utter prostration both of mind and body. Dyce's cheery patience never failed. Her sunny nature diffused a bright hopefulness throughout the sick chamber, until Evadne would lie in a dreamy content, almost fancying herself back in the old home as she listened to the musical tones and watched the dusky hands which so deftly ministered to her comfort. One day after she had lain for a long time in silence, she looked up at her faithful nurse and the grey eyes shone like stars. "Dyce!" she cried softly. "I have found Jesus Christ!" CHAPTER IX. Reginald Hawthorne lay upon a couch on the wide veranda of his lovely home. The birds held high carnival around him,--nesting in the large cherry tree, playing hide and seek among the fragrant apple blossoms and making the air melodious with their merry songs. Brilliant orioles flashed to and fro like gleams of gold in the sunlight, as they built their airy hammocks high among the swaying branches of the great willow, and one inquisitive robin swept boldly through the clustering vines which screened the front of the veranda and perched upon his shoulder. He heard the merry hum of the bees at work and the strident call of the locusts, mingled with the distant neighing of horses and the soft lowing of the cows, but all the sweetness of nature was powerless to lift the gloom which seemed to envelop him as in a shroud. His face was white and drawn with pain and there were heavy rings beneath his eyes. Reginald Hawthorne would be a cripple for life.