He led her out to the carriage waiting to take him to the hospital, and a group of the wretched dwellers in the foul street soon after stood watching the great surgeon's carriage, while he was in the bare upstairs room of the crowded house. He stayed an hour, and came again and again, till the day came when another carriage stopped at that door, and a hushed crowd of neighbours stood around, to see Nurse Elisia's patient carried out, asleep. "If I only had come to you sooner!" she said. "I could have done no more," replied Sir Denton. "Believe me, it is the simple truth. We can both honestly say that we have done everything that human brain and hands could do." They were walking slowly away from the house where the woman had died. "And now I must speak to you about yourself." "About myself?" she said wonderingly. "Yes; I ask you no questions about your friends, or your reasons for taking up the life to which you have devoted yourself; but I am interested in you and your future. Do you intend to go on attending the sick and suffering?" "Yes," she said simply. "Good; but not like this. You are young and beautiful, and at all hours you are going about here alone." "I have no fear," she said, smiling. "The poor people here respect me." "Yes; and, to the honour of rough manhood, I believe, my child, that there are hundreds who would raise a hand for your protection; but the time will come when you will meet with insult from some drink-maddened brute. You must give it up. Your presence is so much light in these homes of darkness, but--you have interested me, as I tell you." She looked at him searchingly. He read her thoughts and smiled. "I am speaking as your grandfather might. Let me advise you, my child. This must not go on." "I thank you," she replied; "but I have devoted myself to this life, and I cannot turn back." "I do not ask you to turn back," he said. "You have devoted yourself to the sick and suffering. The duties can be as well performed where you will be safe, and treated with respect." She looked at him doubtingly. "Let me counsel you," he said. "Come." "Where?" she asked, and he held out his hand. "You can trust me," he said; and he led her to his carriage, and then through the ward of the hospital where he reigned supreme. It was a few days after a terrible accident at one of the hives of industry, and among other sufferers, some ten or a dozen poor work-girls lay, burned, maimed, and in agony, longingly gazing at the door to see the face of the grey-haired man on whose words they hung for life and strength. That day he came accompanied by his pale, sweet-faced young friend, in whose beautiful eyes the tears gathered as she went round with him from bed to bed, appalled by the amount of bodily and mental suffering gathered in that one narrow space. "Well?" he said, a couple of hours later. "Is it too dreadful, or will you help me here?" "Can I?" she said simply. "I am so ignorant and young."