"And you won't let me stay?" "_Won't let you_? Pray tell me if young ladies like you like taking care of sick people." "Young ladies just like me do, if brothers don't send them away." Did he say, "Brothers ar'n't Gibraltars"? I thought so; but immediately thereafter, in that other voice, out of that other self that revolved only in a long, long period, came,-- "Will you come in?" He had not moved one inch from the door of the room out of which he had come; but I had walked a little nearer, that my voice might not disturb the sick. The one lying dead, never more to be disturbed, where was she? Kate, the little maid, said,-- "It is in there he wants you to go." Abraham Axtell stood aside to let me enter. There was no woman there, no one to say to me, in sweet country wise,--"I'm glad you're come,--it's very kind of you; let me take your things." I did not wait, but threw aside my hood, the very one Sophie had lent me to go into the tower, and, taking off my shawl and furs, I laid them as quietly away in the depths of a huge sofa's corner as though they had hidden there a hundred times before. "I think I scarcely needed this," I said, putting upon the centre-table, under the light of the lamp, Miss Nightingale's good book,--and I looked around at a library, tempting to me even, as it spread over two sides of the room. He turned at my speaking; for the ungrateful man had, I do believe, forgotten that I was there. He took up the book, looked at its title, smiled a little--scornfully, was it?--at me, and said of her who wrote the book,-- "She is sensible; she bears the result of her own theories before imposing their practice upon others; but," and he went back to the thorn-apple voice, "do you expect to take care of my sister by the aid of this to-night?" "It may give me assistance." "It will not. What does Miss Nightingale know of Lettie?" Well, what does she? I don't know, and so I had to answer,-- "Nothing." "That doctor is here," said Kate, at the door. "Are you coming up, too?" he asked, as he turned suddenly upon me, half-way out of the room. "Certainly!"--and I went out with him. Up the wide staircase walked the little maid, lighting the way, followed by the doctor, Mr. Axtell, and Anna Percival. Kate opened the door of a room just over the library, where we had been.