“Be calm, love,” he whispered, bending over her and just touching his lips to her fair, open brow, as he paused with her at the foot of the stairs. “One moment. I must prepare you to find your sister much changed--greatly broken in health, yet not, I think, with any dangerous disease,” he hastened to add as he saw a look of anguish come into her eyes, the color suddenly fade out of her cheek, leaving it of an almost death-like pallor. “Thank God for that!” she whispered faintly, “but how?--what?--” “She seems to be somewhat asthmatic and very nervous; has grown immensely fat, lost her clear complexion, vivacity of look and manner, and, I think, partially the use of her right hand also. She gave me the left in greeting.” “Oh, Rolfe! is it so?--all that? My poor, poor dear sister!” she murmured, tears trickling down the pale cheeks. He soothed her grief as tenderly as she would that of her little Nannette--the namesake of this beloved only sister--and at length, when she had grown calm again, half carried her up the stairs. The Madame, listening to their approach, was threatened with a renewal of her hysterics, but Mary was equal to the emergency. “Madame, Madame,” she said hastily, “calm yourself, or I shall have to call to them not to come in.” “No, no, you shall do no such thing!” cried her mistress, controlling her nerves by a mighty effort; then, as at that instant the slender, graceful figure of Mrs. Heywood appeared in the doorway, she sprang up with a cry, extending both arms, while her huge frame trembled from head to foot. Mrs. Heywood flew to meet the offered embrace. “Nannette, Nannette!” and tears fell fast as lip met lip in a long, clinging kiss. “Pansy, Pansy! oh, my little Pansy! my darling! my wronged, long-suffering, abused little sister!” sobbed the Madame, holding her close, “can you, will you, forgive me, dear?” “With all my heart, my own Nannette,” returned Ethel, weeping on her neck. Then, lifting her head and gazing tenderly into the agitated face so painfully changed to her, and noting the tumultuous heaving of the broad chest, “Oh, my poor, poor dear sister, how changed you are! how ill! You seem hardly able to breathe!” “Yes, I have suffered,” panted the Madame. “I have mourned and wept over your loss, Pansy, and for many years have been constantly searching for you. Heaven be praised, darling, that I have found you at last!” The last words were spoken gaspingly, and Ethel felt the stout arms relaxing their hold on her. Mr. Heywood sprang forward just in time to save his sister-in-law from falling, and with Mary’s assistance got her into her chair again, where she lay back on her cushions wheezing and panting in a way that greatly alarmed her sister. Mary reassured her: “It is nothing, ma’am. You’d know that if you’d been with her as long as I have. She’ll get over it in a few minutes. You see she gets kind of upset with anything that excites her.”