Then, after some slight delay, she was admitted to Hubert's room; and there, in spite of her resolution, at first she stood aghast. It startled her to perceive that, although she knew his face so well, she might not have recognised it in an unaccustomed place. It was discolored, and the eyes were bloodshot and wandering; the hair had been partially cut away from his head, and the stubble of an unshaven beard showed itself on cheeks and chin. Any romance that might have existed in the mind of a girl of twenty concerning her lover's illness was struck dead at once and forever. He was ill--terribly ill and delirious; he looked at her with a madman's eyes, and his face was utterly changed; his voice too, as he raised it in the constant stream of incoherent talk that escaped his lips, was hoarse and rasping and unnatural. Anything less interesting, less attractive to a weak soul than this delirious fever-stricken man could not well be imagined; but Cynthia's soul was anything but weak. She was conscious that never in her life had she loved Hubert Lepel so intensely, so devotedly as she loved him now. Something of the maternal instinct awakened within her at the sight of his great need. He had no one to minister to his more subtle wants--no one to tend him out of pure love and sympathy. The man Jenkins, who sat beside the bed, ready to hold him down if in his delirium he should attempt to throw himself out of the window, was awkward and uncouth in a sick-room. Mrs. Jenkins, although ready and willing to help, was longing to steal away to her little children at home. The landlady down-stairs had announced that she could not possibly undertake to wait upon an invalid. All these facts became clear to Cynthia in a very little time. She saw, as soon as she entered the room, that the window-blind was awry and the curtains were wrongly hung, that the table and the chest of drawers were crowded with an untidy array of bottles, cups and glasses, and that the whole aspect of the place was desolate. This fact did not concern her at present however; her attention was given wholly and at once to the sick man. She stood for a minute or two at the foot of the bed, realising with a pang the fact that he did not know her. His eyes rested upon her as he spoke; but there was no recognition in them. She could not hear all he said; but, between strings of incoherent words and unintelligible phrases, some sentences caught her ear. "She will not come," said the sick man--"she has given me up entirely! Quite right too! The world would say that she was perfectly right. And I am in the wrong--always--I have always been wrong; and there is no way out of it. Some one said that to me once--no way out of it--no way out of it--no way out of it--oh, Heaven!" The sentence ended with a moan of agony which made Cynthia writhe with pain.