Thus ten years passed, and then came the black day, when Rose fell sick of a fever and must keep her bed. She sent word to George daily that he should expect her on the morrow, until a delirium took her, and the doctor, who had been charged by Rose to make light of her suffering, was now forced to tell Mr. Kelly the truth. She lay at death's door, calling on her husband, who could not come to her, and talking ever of that little garden at Avignon above the Rhone, in which she fancied that he and she now walked. Mr. Kelly took the news in silence as a dog takes pain, and never slept and barely moved while the fever ran its course. Rose was at the Tower Gates, George was in his prison; a few yards only were between them, but those few yards were built upon with stones. In the daytime messages were brought to him often enough, but at night, when the mists rose from the river and the gates were closed, and the Parson had the dark loitering hours wherein to picture the sick room with its dim light and the tired figure tossing from this side to that of the bed, then indeed Smilinda had her revenge. CHAPTER XXVII HOW, BY KEEPING PAROLE, MR. KELLY BROKE PRISON Every morning Mr. Kelly looked for the doctor to come to him with word that in the little house without the Tower Gate the blinds were drawn. But that message was not brought to him, and Colonel Montague, making a visit to the prison, three weeks after Rose fell ill, found the Parson sitting very quiet in his chair with a face strangely illumined. 'Last night she slept,' said George, 'and waked only at midday. The fever has left her, and she will live. It is wonderful.' The Colonel said what was fitting to the occasion, and the Parson replied to him absently, with his eyes upon the river and the boats swinging on the tide; and after a while Father Myles Macdonnell, whom the Colonel had neither seen nor heard of, was ushered into the room. The Reverend Father was a kinsman of Parson Kelly, and though their acquaintance had been of the slightest, the Parson now turned to him with a great welcome. For his thoughts were now entirely bent upon an escape from his captivity. He dared not survey the possibility that some time Rose might again fall ill, and that again he must sit behind the bars and only hear news of how she fared.