"Well, then, to be candid with you, it _does_ look rather serious," he answers, with the careless deliberate calmness which those whose half-life is spent in pronouncing death-warrants seem insensibly to acquire: "a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on by neglect and exposure. By-the-by, can you inform me whether there is any predisposition to lung-disease in Miss--Miss Craven's family?" "I know nothing about her family," replies the other, gloomily. He has no reason, beyond the probability of the thing, for supposing that she had ever had a father or mother, much less a grandfather or grandmother. Mr. Brand retires, completely mystified; and St. John, re-entering his room, throws himself into an arm-chair, and, covering his face with his hands, sends up violent voiceless prayers for the young life that is exchanging the first passes with that skilfulest of fencers, whom the nations have christened "Death!" In all his rough godless life he has had small faith in the efficacy of prayer: but, on the bare chance of there being some good in it, he prays wordlessly in his stricken heart for her. Before they have done with him, the inmates of Blessington Hall have grown very familiar with Dr. Brand's face; night and morning, night and morning, coming and going, coming and going, through many days; for the adversary with whom the child is wrestling has thrown many a better and stouter than she--and the battle is bitter. It is of little use now that she hate the shadowing ginger curtains of the vast old wooden four-poster; there must she lie, through all the weary twenty-four hours, in paroxysms of acutest pain, in fits of utter breathlessness, in agonies of thirst. Grief for Jack, love for St. John, shamed concern at Miss Blessington's damaging story and insulting words, are all swallowed up in the consuming craving for something to wet her parched lips, to cool her dry throat--something to drink! something to drink! By-and-by, with the pain, she becomes light-headed--wanders a little--"babbles of green fields;" babbles to the uninterested ears of the sleepy tired nurse, of the twisted seat under the old cherry-tree, of the tea-roses up the kitchen-garden walk, of the yellow chickens in the rickyard. Then her delirium grows wilder: the green flabby Cupids on the walls come down out of the tapestry, and make at her. One, that is riding on a lion and blowing a horn, with fat cheeks puffed out, comes riding at her--riding up the bed-quilt, riding over her. Then the black and gold cocks on the old japan-chest, that, with neck-feathers ruffled, and heads lowered, stand ever, in act to fight, change their attitude: come pecking, pecking at her--pecking at her eyes; and she, with terrified hands stretched out, fights at them--thrusts them away. "And thrice the double twilights rose and fell, About a land where nothing seemed the same, At morn or eve, as in the days gone by."