Guy brought her the easy-chair from the front room and placed it for her by the window. With a faint smile she thanked him and said: “You are very kind,” but the smile hurt Guy cruelly, it was so sad, so full of unintentional reproach, while the eyes she lifted to his looked so grieved and weary that he insensibly murmured to himself, “Poor child!” as he left her, and with the doctor repaired to the house, where Agnes was impatiently waiting for them, and where, in the light badinage which followed, they forgot poor little Maddy. It was the first keen disappointment she had ever known, and it crushed her as completely as many an older person has been crushed by heavier calamities. “Disgraced forever and ever,” she kept repeating to herself, as she tried to shake off the horrid nightmare stealing over her. “How can I hold up my head again at home, where nobody will understand just how it was, except grandpa and grandma? The people will say I do not know anything, and I _do_! I _do_! Oh, grandpa, I can’t earn that thirty-six dollars now. I most wish I was dead, and I am—I am dying. Somebody—come—quick!” There was a low cry for help, succeeded by a fall, and while in Mrs. Conner’s parlor Guy Remington and Dr. Holbrook were chatting gayly with Agnes, Madeline was lying upon the office floor, white and insensible. Little Jessie Remington, tired of sitting still and listening to what her mamma and Mrs. Conner were saying, had strayed off into the garden, and after filling her hands with daffodils and early violets, made her way at last to the office, the door of which was partially open. Peering curiously in she saw the crumpled bonnet, with its ribbons of blue, and attracted by this advanced into the room, until she came where Madeline was lying. With a feeling that something was wrong, Jessie bent over the girl, asking if she were asleep, while she lifted the long, fringed lashes drooping on the colorless cheek. The dull, dead expression of the eyes sent a chill through Jessie’s heart, and hurrying to the house she cried, “Oh, brother Guy, somebody’s dead in the office, and her bonnet is all jammed!” Scarcely were the words uttered before Guy and the doctor both were with Madeline, the former holding her in his arms, while he smoothed the short hair, thinking how soft and luxuriant it was, and how fair was the face which never moved a muscle beneath his scrutiny. The doctor was wholly self-possessed; Maddy had no terrors for him now. She needed his services, and he rendered them willingly, applying restoratives which soon brought back signs of life in the rigid form. With a shiver and a moan Madeline whispered, “Oh, grandma, I’m so tired, and so sorry, but I could not help it. I forgot everything.”