He threw open the door and stepped back. Entering the room, this is what Clarence Vaughan saw: Lying upon the floor in a pool of blood, the splendid form of Lucian Davlin, one arm dripping the red life fluid, the other clasping close the form of a beautiful girl. His eyes were closed and his face pallid as the dead. The eyes of the girl were staring wide and set, her face expressing unutterable fear and horror, every muscle rigid as if in a struggle still. One hand was clenched, and thrown out as if to ward off that death-like grasp, while the other clutched a pistol, still warm and smelling of powder. It was the work of a moment to stop the flow of blood, and restore the wounded man to consciousness. But first he had removed the insensible girl from Davlin's grasp, laid her upon a bed in the inner room and, removing the fatal weapon from her hand, instructed Henry how to apply the remedies a skilful surgeon has always about him, especially in the city. At the first sure symptoms of slowly returning life, Doctor Vaughan summoned Henry to look after his master, whom he left, with rather unprofessional alacrity, to attend to the fair patient in whose welfare he felt so much interest. As he bent over the still unconscious girl, his face was shadowed with troubled thought. She was in no common faint, and feeling fully assured what the result would be, he almost feared to see the first fluttering return of life. At last a shudder agitated her form, and looking up with just a gleam of recognition, she passed into another swoon, thence to another. Through long weary hours she only opened her eyes to close them, blinded with the vision of unutterable woe; and so the long night wore away. Dr. Vaughan had given brief, stern orders, in accordance with which Lucian Davlin had entrusted his wound to another surgeon for dressing, and then, still in obedience to orders, had swallowed a soothing potion and betaken himself to other apartments. Henry had summoned a trusty nurse well known to Clarence Vaughan, to assist him at the bedside of Madeline. In the gray of morning, pallid and interesting, with his arm in a sling, Lucian reappeared in the sick room. Evidently he had not employed all of the intervening time in slumber, for his course of action seemed to have been fully matured. "She won't be able to leave here for many days, I should fancy?" he half inquired in a low tone, sinking languidly into a sleepy-hollow, commanding a view of the face of the patient, and the back of the physician. "Not alive," was the brief but significant answer. "Not alive! Great heavens, doctor, don't tell me that my miserable accident will cost the little girl her life!" "Ah! your accident: how was that?" bending over Madeline.