“Dr. Nichols here? Mrs. La Rue must be worse. I am glad I came,” Reinette thought, as she went rapidly up the walk and entered unannounced. “How is Mrs. La Rue, and where is Margery?” she asked of a woman whom she met in the hall, and whom she recognized as a neighbor. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Margery has had an apoplectic fit, and is dying,” was the woman’s reply, and with a shriek of terror and surprise Reinette fled past her up the stairs to Margery’s room, where she paused a moment on the threshold to take in the scene which met her astonished view. By the window, which was raised to admit the air, the doctor stood, with a grave, troubled look, while near him sat Mrs. La Rue, with a face which might have been cut from stone, so rigid and immovable was every feature, while her eyes, deep-set in her head, with dark circles around them, seemed like coals of fire as they turned upon Reinette, who shuddered with fear at their awful expression. At sight of her the woman’s lips moved, but made no sound—only her fingers pointed to the bed where Margery lay breathing heavily, but with no other sign to show that she was living. She looked like one dying, and had looked thus since the moment she fell to the floor at the end of her mother’s story. For a few moments Mrs. La Rue had been as helpless and almost as insensible as her daughter; then, rousing herself with a great effort, she knelt beside the unconscious girl, and lifting her head covered the white face with kisses and tears, and called upon her by every tender epithet to open her eyes and speak, if only to curse the one who had wrought so much harm. But Margery’s ears were deaf alike to words of love or pleading, and she lay so still, and looked so awful, with that bloody froth about her lips, that, at last, in wild affright, her mother called for help, and the woman who lived next door was startled by a succession of cries, each louder than the preceding, and which came apparently from Mrs. La Rue’s cottage. Entering at a rear door, and following the direction of the sounds, she came to the chamber where Margery still lay upon the floor, with her mother bending over her and shrieking for aid. To lift Margery up and carry her to bed, and send for a physician, was the woman’s first work, and then she tried what she could do to restore the insensible girl, who only moaned faintly in token that she knew what was passing around her. When questioned by the physician, who was greatly puzzled by the case, Mrs. La Rue said that Margery had not seemed well for some time—had overworked, she thought, and that she had fallen suddenly from her chair while talking to her after dinner. This was all the explanation she would give, and, more perplexed than he had ever been in his life, the physician bent his energies to help the young girl who, it seemed, even to him, was dying, for the most powerful restoratives and stimulants failed to produce any effect, or to move so much as an eyelid.