“I wish that we could take her to the sea-shore to recuperate her exhausted energies,” Doctor Fielding said in May, for the wasted face and the hollow dark eyes of the girl troubled his peace. He longed for her to get well faster. “And cannot we do so?” his wife asked, wistfully, for she, too, longed to see the drooping, pining invalid grow well and strong again. He flushed and sighed as though his poverty were a disgrace to his manhood. “I had as well cry for the moon,” he answered. “I am so poor, dear little wife, and my income from my practice is so small that it barely supports us, even with your strict economy and the toil of your little hands over the weary routine of household tasks. Even the long illness of that dear girl has been a heavy tax upon us, and it will take close financiering to meet our expenses this year; so our greatest wish cannot be gratified,” he added, little dreaming what terrible fruit his kindly spoken and kindly meant words would bear in the near future. CHAPTER XXVI. I MUST HAVE MONEY. Doctor Fielding had forgotten that the door of the room where he sat with his wife was ajar, and that it opened into the pretty little chamber where Nina was lying back listlessly with half-shut eyes in the comfortable reclining chair he had procured for her. When he had gone in a little while ago to speak to her she had been asleep, but now she was broad awake, and every word of the conversation had reached her ears. She awoke suddenly to a fact that had never occurred to her mind before. “The Fieldings are poor people, and I have been here two months, weakly brooding over my troubles without giving a thought to the fact that I am a burden and expense to them almost heavier than they can bear,” she said to herself with lively compunction, although she might well have been excused for her thoughtlessness. Having been reared in an atmosphere of wealth and luxury, she had perhaps never given a thought to the fact that there is so much want, misery and sorrow in the world, all caused by the lack of money. But her sensitive conscience, spurred into activity by the words she had overheard, was on the alert now. “I must go away from here and relieve these kind true friends of the burden of my support, and I must try to reimburse them for the expense I have been to them,” she decided. But in a moment came the thought: “Where shall I go?” “Not back to Selwyn Heights,” and she shivered, “Not back to my faithless, unloving husband, and my triumphant rival. They believe me dead as I would have been but for Doctor Fielding. They may think so still. I shall never intrude upon them. Doubtless they will be married soon, and _she_ will reign in my old home, queen of the heart I could not win although I was his wedded wife.”