She had returned from Washington the night before, and, finding the note which had been sent to her when Godfrey became so ill, had come immediately after breakfast to see how he was. With a feeling that it would not be proper for her to go into his sick-room, Alice, who was stopping up town, remained at home, bidding Miss Rossiter give her love to Godfrey, and tell him she would come if he wished to see her. Mrs. Wilson was out marketing when Miss Rossiter came, and whatever information that lady received concerning her nephew, she had from the servant who escorted her to his room. “His sister with him! I did not know she had returned,” she said, in some surprise, when in reply to the question, “Who takes care of him?” the servant said: “His sister, ma’am. She has been here more than a week.” Miss Rossiter had spent a day in Hampstead the previous summer, and seen Gertie; but she had no thought of her now, and was utterly astonished and confounded, as she entered the room, to find Gertie Westbrooke sitting by Godfrey, who was sleeping from the effects of a powerful opiate which the doctor had administered an hour or so before. At the sound of the opening door she looked up and gave a warning “Sh-hh!” as Miss Rossiter exclaimed, loudly: “Gertie,—Gertie Westbrooke! Why are _you_ here calling yourself his _sister_? Are you not ashamed? What does it mean? Tell me before I venture to stop a moment in the same room with you!” And the highly indignant and rigidly virtuous spinster held back her clothes lest they should come in contact with the garments of the young girl, thus outraging every rule of propriety if not of decency. Alice, who had been and in some sense still considered herself his affianced wife, would not so much as come to the house unless it was necessary, while even _she_, a matron of fifty and more, had some doubts about going herself into the room; and lo, here was the young girl,—this stranger,—sitting by him with the utmost familiarity, and bidding her be quiet and speak lower lest the sick man should awaken. Miss Rossiter was greatly shocked, and, as her first question was not answered except by a look of innocent wonder, she repeated it angrily: “Why are you here, passing for his sister? Don’t you know your good name will be ruined forever?” Only an hour before the doctor had said to Gertie: “There is but one chance in a hundred for your brother. If he can be made to sleep and be kept quiet, he may recover, but if the paroxysms and his fancy about the ship return he will die. Do your best for him.” In dumb despair Gertie listened to him with such pain in her heart as sisters never feel.