"Yes. It was Mrs. Marne. She called up Miss Carstairs in the first excitement of--of your accident, it seems, and I'm afraid she gave a very exaggerated and alarming account, you know. They put her to bed," continued Peter clearing his throat, "and there she's been ever since. The great shock, you know. Mrs. Marne saw her this morning--the first time she had been admitted. It's all quite sad. Quite sad. We'll talk of it again when--you're feeling a bit stronger." Varney, who had lain like a statue for two days and nights, had begun moving a little under the coverlet, stirring first one swathed leg, then the other, as though seeking vainly to shift his position. Now he said at once: "I want to hear now." Peter gave a deep sigh. He thought, and rightly, that this was the best thing that had happened yet. "Well, it's all very strange, Larry. When I said that it was the shock of the accident that had made her ill, I did not tell the whole truth. It seems that she is suffering from a terrible hallucination about it. She feels in some strange way that the responsibility for all this--is hers. She told Mrs. Marne that she was responsible for your being on the road that night, and that she had been unfair about something or other, and that but for that the--trouble would never have happened. I don't pretend to understand it. But feeling as she does now--if anything were to--to go wrong, the poor child would count herself--she would count herself--" "Don't!" said Varney very clearly and distinctly. His face looked all at once so ghastly that Peter's heart stopped beating. He thought in a horrible flash that the end had come, and that he, Peter Maginnis, had brought it by tearing at the worst wound his friend had. His clumsy diplomacy fell from him as at the last trump. He dropped on his knees beside the bed with a groan. "For God's sake, Larry, don't leave _that_ mark to a child like her. Don't give us all _that_ sorrow to carry to our graves--" But Varney had pulled his arms free and was clutching wildly at his head-bandages with heavily swathed fingers. "You needn't worry about me," he said in a sharp anguished voice. "Great Scott! What's--what's wrong with my _head_! It's killing me." He recovered with a speed which puzzled the old Hunston doctor even more than his previous lethargy had done. Five days later he was well enough to be lifted downstairs to the small back piazza, and here he lay blanketed up in a reclining chair for half the sunny afternoon. A bundle of letters and telegrams lay on his covered knees; and going slowly through them, he came presently to one from Elbert Carstairs, arrived only that morning: "MY DEAR BOY: Words are feeble things at their best, and I know of none that would convey to you my great joy at the news that you are out of danger. By the same mail, I have learned that my other dear sick one in Hunston is quite herself again, and I say to God in gratitude upon my knees that my cup is full."