‘When she has not above half a lung, and her heart is--but you don’t understand these matters, perhaps. She may make a rally for a few hours, but I doubt if she will see out this night.’ After this, Wentworth went home to the closed-up chambers, where nobody expected him, and to which he got admittance with difficulty. He had to walk miles, he thought, through those dreadful streets, all like each other, all gleaming with wet, before he could even find a cab. There was no strength left in him. He went on and on mechanically, and might, he thought, have been wandering all night, but that the sight of a slowly passing cab, which he knew he wanted, brought him back to a dull sense of the necessity of shelter. The cold rooms, so vacant and unprepared, which were just shelter and no more, were scarcely an improvement upon the mechanical march and movement, which deadened his mind and made him less sensible of his terrible position. It had been arranged that if she was still alive in the morning, a messenger was to be sent to him, and that then he was to take the necessary steps to redeem his pledge. But he said to himself that it was impossible--that she could not live till morning. It was a horrible moment for a man to go through--a man whose life had blossomed into such gladness and prosperity. But still, if he could but be sure that nothing worse was to come of it--and what could come of it when the doctor himself was all but sure that she could not see out the night? CHAPTER V.