At length their strained hearing caught the quick tread of horses' hoofs on the turf without. "The doctor, the doctor!" came simultaneously from the lips of Cecil and the watchers. The doctor,--there was hope in the very name. How eagerly they watched his face as he bent over the patient! It was a calm, self-contained face, but they saw a shadow flit over it, a sudden almost imperceptible change of expression that said "Death" as plainly as if he had spoken it. They could do nothing, he said,--nothing but wait for the end to come. How the moments lingered! Sometimes Cecil bent over the sufferer with every muscle quivering to her paroxysms; sometimes he could endure it no longer and went out into the cool night air or into the library, where with the mere mechanical instinct of a student he picked up a book, reading a few lines in it, then throwing it aside. Yet wherever he was he felt her sufferings as acutely as when standing by her side. His whole frame was in keenest sympathy with hers, his whole being full of pain. So sharp were his sensations that they imparted an abnormal vigor to his mind. Every line his eyes met in reading stood out on the page with wonderful distinctness. The words seemed pictorial, and his mind grasped abstruse propositions or involved expressions with marvellous facility. He noted it, and remembered afterward that he thought at the time how curious it was that his tortured sympathies should give him such startling acuteness of perception. The slow night waned, the slow dawn crept over the eastern hills. Cecil stood with haggard eyes at the foot of the bed, watching the sleeper's face. As the daylight brightened, blending with the light of the still burning lamps, he saw a change come over her countenance; the set face relaxed, the look lost its wildness. A great hope shone in his hollow eyes. "She is getting better, she is coming out of her sufferings," he whispered to the doctor. "She will be out of her sufferings very soon," he replied sadly; and then Cecil knew that the end was at hand. Was it because the peace, the profound serenity which sometimes is the prelude of death, filling her being, penetrated his, that he grew so strangely calm? An inexpressible solemnity came to him as he looked at her, and all his agitation left him. Her face grew very sweet and calm, and full of peace. Her eyes met Cecil's, and there was in them something that seemed to thank him for all his goodness and patience,--something that was both benediction and farewell. Her lips moved, but she was past the power of speech, and only her eyes thanked him in a tender, grateful glance.