The front door had opened suddenly, and the bright light from the entry lamp had streamed out into the night. The broad glare revealed the slender graceful form of Nina poised on the threshold a moment, and in the next instant the whole scene was blotted out by darkness as she slammed the door behind her and hurried out into the street. “Great heaven, she has escaped, and she will make another attempt at self-destruction,” Doctor Fielding ejaculated, hoarsely, and he dashed across the street in desperate pursuit. “I can overtake her in a moment,” he thought confidently. But in this he was mistaken. For one thing Nina had the start of him, and in the second place he could scarcely preserve his footing on the pavement which was like a sheet of ice with the sleet and snow that had been steadily coming down all day and freezing as it fell. Making his best efforts to effect a swift transit over terra firma he found that he was not gaining in the least and that he could scarcely keep the flitting figure in sight as it hurried on beneath the glare of the gaslights. When she was more than a block ahead of him he saw her disappear into the drug-store whose ruddy colored lights streamed out athwart the gloomy darkness of the night. He instantly divined her terrible purpose, and with horror-thrilled pulses redoubled his efforts to overtake her. Though his feet threatened to fly from beneath him every moment, he fairly flew over the pavement. He was almost abreast with the drug-store when Nina reappeared in the lurid light of the door-way, drained the phial of laudanum to the last drop, and flashed out and on though the darkness. He gave a single downward glance at the phial lying label upward, with the staring skull and cross-bones and the black letters laudanum, then he rushed after her in desperate pursuit. She, poor child, fainting with the horror of what she had done, and believing that death would overtake her in a few moments, had slipped into a secluded alley-way, and crouched down in a heap, waiting despairingly for the end, with a murmured prayer on her trembling lips: “Dear papa, dear mamma, and dear Lord, pardon me for what I have done!” And so Doctor Fielding found her. There was no time to be lost, and he uttered no word, raised no alarm. He had a small case of medicine and instruments in his pocket. He set to work then and there to relieve his patient of the deadly drug she had swallowed. The intense cold was a help rather than a hindrance to his efforts, and in a short time he was successful. She was dumb and passive in his hands, feeling that fate was too strong for her. No one passed, no one ever dreamed that in that narrow alley-way, on that wild March night, Death had been cheated of his prey, and presently Doctor Fielding drew Nina’s hand through his arm and led her quietly home again almost before his wife had missed her. CHAPTER XXV. POVERTY.