"It is my punishment," he groaned, "for a life of arrogance and pride. It has been a kind of tyranny to them all, and now I am to lie here, helpless, deceived by everyone in turn. My punishment--my punishment! Better that I had never awakened to my wretched state." At that moment there was the faint rustling made by a door being softly opened and passing over a thickly piled carpet, and directly after a faint shadow fell across his couch, then another, and there was a faintly heard sob. "Hush, dearest; he sleeps more lightly now." Ralph Elthorne's head was turned away from the speaker, but he knew the gentle voice, and he repeated to himself the words wonderingly, "Hush, dearest; he sleeps more lightly now." To whom was Nurse Elisia speaking so tenderly? The answer came at once. "Oh, nurse, dear nurse, is he never to be well and strong again?" The words came from the speaker's heart so full of love and sorrow that there was a stifling sensation in the listener's breast, and when, directly after, he felt warm breath upon his cheek, and a kiss, light almost as the breath itself, his arms clasped Isabel to his breast. "Papa! papa!" That was all; but as Nurse Elisia turned away to the window, it seemed to her that father and daughter were closer together in heart than they could have been for years. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. AUNT ANNE HARASSED. Many days had passed, and life went on at Hightoft in the same sad way. It was the "master's" desire that the nurse should stay, but there was rebellion among the servants against "master's favourite," and poor Aunt Anne's breast swelled with anger against her niece, who had ventured to tell her that she was unjust. "But I shall say nothing, Isabel, only that some day you will come to me repentant, asking my pardon. I always have been ready to ridicule all superstitious things, and have laughed at table turnings, and talkings, and hypnotisms, and mesmerisms, and all the rest of it, but that woman has something of the sort in her, a kind of power for influencing weak people, for she has literally bewitched you all. If she had lived a hundred years ago, she would have died." "Why, of course, Aunt dear," said Isabel smiling. "It is nothing to make fun of, my dear. She would have either had her toes tied together, and been thrown into a pond, or been burned at the stake. That was the fate of all these witches then." "Poor Nurse Elisia!" said Isabel smiling. "I'm glad she did not live then." "Maria tells me," continued Aunt Anne, "that it was just the same at the hospital. That woman used to turn all the other nurses and the students round her little finger; and as for Sir Denton--well, they may call him a great surgeon, but if ever the carriage overturns, and I am badly hurt, no Sir Dentons for me. I call him a weak, silly, infatuated old goose. Maria only yesterday told me that once--"