After so much as she had borne in her troubled life, God knows it was hard. She did not rebel, but her heart lifted up a bitter cry to the Father in heaven. It was just then, while her anxious ear caught the step of the doctor on the stair, that Mrs. Vincent was aware also of a carriage driving rapidly up to the door. Preoccupied as she was, the sound startled her. A passing wonder who it could be, and the vague expectation which influences the mind at the great crises of life, when one feels that anything may happen, moved her dimly as she rose to receive the doctor. Dr. Rider came in with his noiseless step and anxious face; they shook hands with each other mechanically, she gazing at him to see what his opinion was before it could be formed--he looking with solicitous serious eyes on the sick-bed. The light was dim, and Dr. Rider held it up to see his patient. There she lay, moving now and then with the restlessness of weakness, the pale large eyelids half closed, the pale lips dropping apart,--a solemn speechless creature, abstracted already out of this world and all its influences. The light that streamed over her for the moment made no difference to Susan. There was nothing here powerful enough to rouse the soul which horror and passion had driven into one terrible corner of memory, obliterating all the rest of her life. Dr. Rider looked at her with eyes in which the impatience of powerless strength overcame even his professional reserve. He wrung the widow's hand, which she laid on his arm in a trembling appeal to him to tell her the worst. "The worst is that she is dying before our eyes, and that she might be saved," he said, leading the poor mother to the other end of the room. "All her heart and soul are concentrated upon that time when she was away from you; unless we can rouse her by something that will recall that time, she will never know you more. Think! is there nothing that would wake her up even to remember the misery she endured? Where is your servant who was with her?--but she has seen her lately, and nothing has come of that. If you have the courage and strength," said the doctor, once more grasping Mrs. Vincent's hand tight, "to talk of that man under the name she knew him by--to talk of him so as perhaps she might hear; to discuss the matter; anything that will recall her mind. Hush! what is that noise down-stairs?"