Elfie renewed the medicine, the ice and the mustard, but with little effect. The evil symptoms increased rapidly, and before morning Erminie was again, with blazing eyes and burning cheeks, raving and tossing in an agony of fever and frenzy. In the extremity of terror Elfie dispatched first her father and then Captain Ethel, who were both watching the night out in the library, to fetch the physician. But Dr. Burney happened to be with a lady patient whom he could not leave abruptly, and so it followed that the sun rose before he made his appearance by Erminie’s bedside. A fearful, a terrible vision, met him there. The beautiful and angelic girl seemed to be turned into a raging and foaming demoniac; and it required the united efforts of Elfie and Catherine to hold her down on her bed. Violent remedies had to be resorted to now to allay the frightful cerebral excitement—cupping, leeching and bleeding were tried in turn; and in reducing the sufferer to calmness, they almost reduced her to death. And her medical attendant knew, and her anxious friend feared, that as the second attack of frenzy had been more violent than the first, so the third attack must be the most violent, and would probably end in death. Thus the approaching night was anticipated in horrible dread. Meanwhile Erminie lay in the collapse of exhaustion—pale and faded as a broken lily—without motion, speech, or color, almost without blood, breath, or life. From time to time Elfie, weeping and watching, moistened the poor girl’s lips with a little melted ice. Towards evening there seemed to be a change. Erminie moved and sighed. And then opened her eyes and breathed. Elfie bent over her. “Why——” began Erminie, and then she ceased. Elfie bent lower, and softly inquired: “What is that you say, dear?” “Why—am I—” again commenced Erminie, with an effort; but again her voice failed for weakness. “Why are you here in bed, do you mean to ask, dear?” suggested Elfie. Erminie nodded. “You over-exerted yourself and have had an attack of illness; but you are better now—much better, thank Heaven,” answered Elfie, cheerfully. “How—bloodless—they—” panted Erminie, looking with surprise at her pale fingers, and speaking in the feeble and pointless way common with persons affected as she was, and breaking down before she finished her sentence. “They were always very white, you know, dear, those fair fingers,” said Elfie, encouragingly. “No—rosy—rosy-tipped—” murmured Erminie, who, when she had been well in mind and body, had been without the least vanity. “So they will be again, dear. Never mind your fingers. Will you try to swallow a teaspoonful of this arrow-root?” coaxed Elfie. Erminie, apparently only to please her nurse, nodded assent and opened her mouth like a bird to receive the atom of nourishment. But the effort was too much for her weakness, and when she had swallowed it she gulped, shuddered and shook her head in refusal of anything more.