Then a strong kind hand touched his wrist, and felt the beating of his heart, and a rough, pleasant voice said in English: "He is exhausted and very weak, but the fever is not high: he will soon be all right." And to add to the wonderful strangeness of his dream, the angel's voice near him murmured: "Thank God! thank God!" Why should an angel thank God that he--Bobby Clyffurde--was not likely to die? He opened his eyes to see what it all meant, and he saw--bending over him--a face that was more exquisitely fair than any that man had ever seen: eyes that were more blue than the sky above, lips that trembled like rose-leaves in the breeze. He was still dreaming and there was a haze between him and that perfect vision of loveliness. And the kind, rough voice somewhere close by said: "Have you got that stretcher ready?" and two other voices replied, "Yes, Sir." But the lips close above him said nothing, and it was Bobby now who murmured: "My love, is it you?" "Your love for always," the dear lips replied, "nothing shall part us now. Yours for always to bring you back to life. Yours when you will claim me--yours for life." They lifted him onto a stretcher, and then into a carriage and a very kind face which he quickly enough recognised as Mme. la Duchesse d'Agen's smiled very encouragingly upon him, whereupon he could not help but ask a very pertinent question: "Mme. la Duchesse, is all this really happening?" "Why, yes, my good man," Madame replied; and indeed there was nothing dreamlike in her tart, dry voice: "Crystal and I really have dragged Dr. Scott away from the bedside of innumerable other sick and wounded men, and also from any hope of well-earned rest to-night: we have also really brought him to a spot very accurately described by our worthy friend, St. Genis, but where, unfortunately, you had not chosen to remain, else we had found you an hour sooner. Is there anything else you want to know?" "Oh, yes! Madame la Duchesse, many things," murmured Bobby. "Please go on telling me." Madame laughed: "Well!" she said, "perhaps you would like to know that some kind of instinct, or perhaps the hand of God guided one of our party to the place where you had gone to sleep. You may also wish to know, that though you seem in a bad way for the present, you are going to be nursed back to life under Dr. Scott's own most hospitable roof: but since Crystal has undertaken to do the nursing, I imagine that my time for the next six weeks will be taken up in arguing with my dear and pompous brother that he will now have to give his consent to his daughter becoming the wife of a vendor of gloves." Bobby contrived to smile: "Do you think that if I promised never to buy or sell gloves again, but in future to try and live like a gentleman--do you think then that he will consent?"