Mrs. Chandos appeared fully dressed, alert, and lamp in hand, to be informed that her daughter Verona had been wandering on the river bank in a high fever, quite off her head! "Oh, Madre di Dios! Whatt a trouble that girl does give," and she put down the lamp and threw up her hands, "whatt a bother! and trouble." "You should see to her at once, there is not a moment to be lost," urged Mrs. Lepell, "or shall I go?" "No; oh, I will go, you wait here." Presently Mrs. Chandos returned and calmly announced to the couple in the verandah that "it was arl-right, Verona could come to no harm, for she lay on the floor in a dead faint." "Shall I go into Rajahpore for the doctor," suggested young Salwey. Mrs. Chandos looked at him quickly--one swift glance of irrepressible hate. "No, no, no!" she replied, "my mother knows all the fever cures, it is only that the girl is out from home, and not accustomed to the climate. It is nothing but the bad season and the rains. In a few days she will be arl-right. Thank you so much. Good-night," and with a wave of her lantern, and an abrupt nod, the two good Samaritans found themselves somewhat cavalierly dismissed. In spite of her mother's cheering diagnosis, for days Verona lay at the point of death; indeed, she certainly would have died, but for the valuable offices of old Mrs. Lopez, who thrust Mrs. Chandos and her daughters out of the sick room, and took the duties of nurse upon herself. What a pitiful object the poor girl looked, with her sunken cheeks, lips cracked with fever, and cumbersome masses of dark hair. Now she moved her head from side to side, beating her burning hands upon the counterpane, muttering and moaning--often in a foreign tongue. It was some time before the concoctions of her grandmother brought Verona round--these were simples of her own manufacture, and in the end proved efficacious. The good woman imported her charpoy into a corner of Verona's room, and scarcely left her patient night and day. In fierce and fluent Hindustani she kept the entire family at bay, and by and by, having no other company, Verona came to know and love her unwieldy, old, half-caste "Nani." As she lay there convalescent in the dim light, Mrs. Lopez unfolded to her ear many a curious Indian tale; but occasionally the conversation was of a more personal description.