Mrs. Heywood had hastened to order a room and bed made ready, and now, returning with such restoratives as were at hand, knelt by the side of the sufferer to apply them. “How young! how pretty!” she said in surprise, gazing down at the unconscious face with its broad white brow, cheeks now slightly flushed with fever, sweet mouth, and large, lustrous eyes, which suddenly opened wide upon her, then closed again, while a deep moan escaped the lips and the head moved restlessly from side to side. “She’s very ill, poor dear!” said the old lady. “Ada, my child, don’t come near lest her disease should be contagious. We ought to have the doctor here as soon as possible, Joseph.” “I’ll go for him,” said Mike, starting for the door. “Hark!” cried Ada, “there’s a horse galloping up the drive. Who can it be coming at this hour on such a night?” Mrs. Heywood rose to her feet, and they all stood for a moment intently listening; then, at a “Hallo!” from a familiar voice, “Why, it’s the doctor himself!” they exclaimed simultaneously, the old gentleman and Ada running out to the hall to greet him. He had already alighted from his horse, and was coming in. “All well?” he asked almost breathlessly, not even pausing to say good-evening. “Yes--no!” returned Mr. Heywood. “This way as quick as you can, doctor; we’ve a poor creature here who is very sick indeed.” “Ah, that explains it,” remarked the physician, as if thinking aloud, while hastily following his host. He pronounced his patient in a brain-fever and very ill indeed. “The poor creature (evidently a lady) must have been half famished for months past, and has hardly strength to cope with the disease,” he said, “yet with the blessing of Providence upon skilful treatment and the best of nursing”--with a bow and a smile directed to Mrs. Heywood--“she may possibly recover.” “Poor dear! my heart is strongly drawn to her,” said the old lady, twinkling away a tear as she bent over the bed where they had laid the sufferer, and softly smoothed back the hair from the pale forehead, “and she shall not die for lack of anything it is in my power to do for her.” “Singular!” murmured the doctor meditatively. Then glancing from the face of his patient to those of his old friends, “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you to wonder how I came here so opportunely to-night,” he remarked. “Why no, to be sure,” said Mr. Heywood. “How was it? We have been so taken up with this poor creature’s critical condition as to have no thought for anything else.”