She said it sadly, with a pang of regret for the condition of things which might result in healing the difference between Godfrey and Alice, and her heart was very heavy as she went back to her patient, who was conducting himself outrageously. They were in a regular north-easter, he said, and the ship was bottom side up, and he was bottom side up with it, and to the horror of his aunt had rolled himself and the bed-clothes out upon the floor, where he lay calling for _La capitaine_ to come and right the ship! With the help of her man-servant, who had accompanied Alice, and who was to stay as long as he was needed, Miss Rossiter got her nephew back to bed, and when Gertie came in he was panting with exhaustion, and evidently bracing himself against another lurch. “Don’t desert,” he whispered to Gertie. “We had a tremendous swell while you were away, and things generally got topsy-turvy.” That _swell_ was the last. He never attempted to roll again, but sank gradually into a state of unconsciousness more alarming than the lurches of the imaginary ship had been. The vessel was quiet now, wrecked, and going down so fast, it seemed to the heart-broken girl who watched beside poor Godfrey day and night with a look of anguish on her face which touched Miss Rossiter, and awoke within her a feeling of interest for the heart-sore creature, whose pain she in a measure understood. At last the colonel came. He had gone straight to Hampstead within an hour after landing in New York, and hearing from Mrs. Tiffe of his son’s illness, and that a telegram to the effect that he was worse had been received that afternoon, he had taken the night train back to the city, leaving Edith at Schuyler Hill, as she was not able to accompany him. Thus it was near midnight when he reached Mrs. Wilson’s boarding-house, and asked eagerly for his son. “Very bad,—dying we fear,” was the report, and he sped swiftly up the stairs, stumbling in the upper landing over a little figure which sat crying on the floor. It was Alice who had come down that afternoon to inquire for Godfrey, and on learning of his condition had refused to go home, and lingered outside the door of the room she would not enter lest she should be guilty of an indiscretion, or, perhaps, contract the fever. Poor Godfrey, how white and ghastly and quiet he was now, as with his eyes shut he lay with his head pillowed on Gertie’s arm, and one of his hands holding to her dress as if afraid of losing her.