A quick, cautious cry from the nurse made Cylmer turn. With two strides he was at the bedside. Had Ismay gone--passed from him without a word, while he looked out on the sky whose glory was gone forever? “She’s not----” “Quick! Go tell the doctor to come here! He’s down-stairs with the specialist from London. She swallowed that champagne.” Before the woman could lay down the spoon Cylmer was back, with the two men at his heels. Ismay turned on her side, moaned. Slowly, very slowly, her eyes opened, then shut again, seeing nothing. “Ismay! Is she--dying?” his tongue cleaving to his mouth. The little doctor laid a hand on Cylmer’s shoulder. “Dying! No; she’s saved.” For with a steady hand the nurse was putting more wine to the lips that closed now on the spoon. With a little sigh Ismay Trelane opened her eyes. The shock in her brain had made her forget all recent things--Marcus Wray, Davids, her quarrel with Cylmer, were all gone from her mind, as a slate is sponged off. All she saw was the man she loved bending over her, holding her hands. With a heavenly smile of rest and peace she smiled at him. “Miles,” she whispered. “My Miles!” “Lie still, my heart! I’m here,” he answered simply. “Hold my hand,” she sighed, and closed her eyes happily, in a sleep that was sweet and natural. And, kneeling by her bed, he held that hand he loved, till with the hours he, too, slept. When she woke again it was he who fed her, and then, and not till then, he went away, cramped and stiff, but happy as he had not been in his life. As he washed and dressed himself in the clothes that had come for him from Cylmer’s Ferry, he heard a whispered conversation at his door, then a knock that made him leap to open it. Was Ismay worse? But it was not Ismay. A man stood on the threshold--two men. Mr. Bolton, the lawyer, and another--bearded, thin, but hale and strong. And yet Cylmer could not believe his senses. Had his long watching made him see visions? “Gaspard!” he cried, wondering who this man could be that was so like the man that was in his grave. “Not Gaspard--but who?” “It’s I, fast enough,” the man answered simply. “Let us in. I only got to England to-day.” “To England?” Cylmer started foolishly. “But----” “But I was never killed, and never buried. I had lent my coat to a Frenchman, and they buried what was left of him for me. I came to myself and wandered away, quite cracked. When I woke up I was in bed in a cottage, and a woman was looking after me. I didn’t know my own name, even, and I was in hideous pain. “I lay like that for I don’t know how long. When I came to myself they told me I was in the lodge of the country-house of the Duke of Tours, and that he, on hearing a man was ill there, had sent his doctor from Paris. He had done an operation that meant kill or cure, and it was cure.” “But Bolton told me you were dying of heart-disease?”