So great was the tension of suspense that Emma’s announcement, startling as it was, excited no surprise. Perhaps they all knew how things were with her; at any rate Lady Graves answered only, “We all love him, dear,” and for a time no more was said. Meanwhile, could she have seen into the little room behind her, Emma might have witnessed the throes of a grief as deep as her own, and even more abandoned; for there, face downwards on her bed, lay Joan Haste, the girl whom she had envied. Sharp sobs shook her frame, notwithstanding that she had thrust her handkerchief between her teeth to check them, and she clutched nervously at the bedclothes with her outstretched hands. Hitherto she had been calm and silent; now, at length, when she was of no more service, she broke down, and Nature took its way with her. “My God!” she muttered between her strangling sobs, “spare him and kill me, for it was my fault, and I am his murderess my God! my God! What have I done that I should suffer so? What makes me suffer so? Oh! spare him, spare him!” Another half-hour passed, and the twilight began to gather in the parlour. “It is very long,” murmured Lady Graves. “While they do not come to call us there is hope,” answered Ellen, striving to keep up a show of courage. Once more there was silence, and the time went on and the darkness gathered. At length a step was heard approaching, and they knew it for that of Dr. Childs. Instinctively they all rose, expecting the last dread summons. He was among them now, but they could not see his face because of the shadows. “Is Lady Graves there?” he asked. “Yes,” whispered the poor woman. “Lady Graves, I have come to tell you that by the mercy of Heaven your son’s constitution has triumphed, and, so far as my skill and knowledge go, I believe that he will live.” For a second the silence continued; then, with a short sharp cry, Emma Levinger went down upon the floor as suddenly as though she had been shot through the heart. Joan also had heard Dr. Childs’s footstep, and, rising swiftly from her bed, she followed him to the door of the parlour, where she stood listening to his fateful words for her anxiety was so intense that the idea of intrusion did not even cross her mind. Joan heard the words, and she believed that they were an answer to her prayer; for her suffering had been too fierce and personal to admit of her dissociating herself from the issue, at any rate at present. She forgot that she was not concerned alone in this matter of the life or death of Henry Graves—she who, although as yet she did not know it, was already wrapped with the wings and lost in the shadow of a great and tragic passion. She had prayed, and she had been answered. His life had been given back to _her._