"Was it so great a sin? He would not let me explain. He has gone out of my life!" she wailed, pathetically, putting back the golden rings of hair from her flushed face. "Rex! Rex!" she sobbed, incoherently, "I shall die--or, worse, I shall go mad, if you do not come back to me!" The three ladies looked at one another questioningly, in alarm. "You must not mind the strange ravings of a person in delirium," said the doctor, curtly; "they are liable to imagine and say all sorts of nonsense. Pay no attention to what she says, my dear ladies; don't disturb her with questions. That poor little brain needs absolute rest; every nerve seems to have been strained to its utmost." After leaving the proper medicines and giving minute instructions as to how and when it should be administered, Dr. West took his departure, with a strange, vague uneasiness at his heart. "Pshaw!" he muttered to himself, as he drove briskly along the shadowy road, yet seeing none of its beauty, "how strange it is these young girls will fall in love and marry such fellows as that!" he mused. "There is something about his face that I don't like; he is a scoundrel, and I'll bet my life on it!" The doctor brought his fist down on his knee with such a resounding blow that poor old Dobbin broke into a gallop. But, drive as fast he would, he could not forget the sweet, childish face that had taken such a strong hold upon his fancy. The trembling red lips and pleading blue eyes haunted him all the morning, as though they held some secret they would fain have whispered. All the night long Daisy clung to the hands that held hers, begging and praying her not to leave her alone, until the poor old lady was quite overcome by the fatigue of continued watching beside her couch. Rest or sleep seemed to have fled from Daisy's bright, restless eyes. "Don't go away," she cried; "everybody goes away. I do not belong to any one. I am all--all--alone," she would sigh, drearily. Again she fancied she was with Rex, standing beneath the magnolia boughs in the sunshine; again, she was clinging to his arm--while some cruel woman insulted her--sobbing pitifully upon his breast; again, she was parting from him at the gate, asking him if what they had done was right; then she was in some school-room, begging piteously for some cruel letter; then out on the waves in the storm and the on-coming darkness of night. The sisters relieved one another at regular intervals. They had ceased to listen to her pathetic little appeals for help, or the wild cries of agony that burst from the red feverish lips as she started up from her slumbers with stifled sobs, moaning out that the time was flying; that she must escape anywhere, anywhere, while there were still fifteen minutes left her. She never once mentioned Stanwick's name, or Septima's, but called incessantly for Rex and poor old Uncle John.