"Nice and cosy?" the woman laughed drearily. "I can't rest quietly until I know:--he---- Can I trust you?" She pulled herself bolt upright in the bed, and looked fixedly at Christina; "will you be silent about everything you see, everything you hear?" "Why, of course. But, you will try and go to sleep now, won't you?" Christina said soothingly, with a startled certainty that her beautiful charge must be delirious. "Go to sleep?" The dreary laugh came again. "How could I sleep? I must lie here; there is no help for that. Marion has done her work well, though, poor soul! she did not mean to harm me. But I can't lie here whilst he--you will promise to keep silence?" "I promise," Christina said hastily, intent only on quieting her at any cost; "is there something you want me to do?" The other nodded. "Go along the passage that leads off this landing," she said, "knock at the third door on the left; and ask--my--the person who is there if there is anything he needs. He may need--food--we could do nothing for him whilst Marion--and the doctor----" She dropped back upon the pillow with closed eyes, and so exhausted a look, that Christina bent over her, too anxious about her well-being to think of her own surprise at the order just given her. "Never mind me," the dark eyes opened, the brows drew together in a frown; "only go to him--and do what he needs. I shall be all right; it is only he who matters." Unfeignedly puzzled, and with all her nervous tremors trooping back upon her, Christina went across the landing, and turned along the passage as directed. Who and what was she going to find in that third room on the left? And why was there a necessity for all this secrecy? Her heart beat very fast, so fast that it nearly suffocated her, as she passed on and paused at the third door, wondering again with a sinking dread, what new mystery was to be revealed to her? To her soft knock, a man's voice responded: "Come in," and she entered a warm and luxuriously-furnished apartment, which appeared to be sitting-room and bedroom combined. Closely wrapped in a thick dressing-gown, and seated in an armchair by the fire, was a man whose cadaverous face and sunken eyes seemed to show recent recovery from some severe illness; and his efforts to rise, when he saw a stranger at the door, only resulted in his sinking back with a groan. "Who are you?" he asked; "why have you come? Where is Madge?" Christina fancied she detected a faint foreign accent in his words, though he spoke fluent English. "I was sent by--by the lady of the house," Christina answered. "I--don't know her name, but she is--very tired." She substituted that word for "ill," when she saw how the sick man started and flushed. "She asked me to come and see if there is anything you need." "Madge tired?" he said in a slow, dreamy voice; "it is so difficult to think that Madge can be tired. She used to be such a tower of strength, always such a tower of strength."