‘I beg your pardon, sir, I could not feel that I was doing my duty if I indulged myself with a night’s rest while the case is so critical; by-and-by I shall be thankful to get an hour’s sleep.’ ‘Do you think Madame Chicot will ever be better?’ The nurse looked down at her white apron, sighed gently, and as gently shook her head. ‘We always like to look at the bright side of things, sir,’ she answered. ‘But is there any bright side to this case?’ ‘That rests with Providence, sir. It is a very bad case.’ ‘Well,’ said Jack Chicot, ‘we must be patient.’ He seated himself in the chair by the bedside and remained there all night, never sleeping, hardly changing his attitude, sunk to the bottom of some deep gulf of thought. Day came at last, and soon after daybreak came George Gerard, who found no change either for better or worse in his patient, and ordered no change in the treatment. ‘Sir John Pelham is to be here at eleven,’ he said. ‘I shall come at eleven to meet him.’ The great surgeon came, made his inspection, and said that all was going on well. ‘We shall make her leg sound again,’ he said, ‘I have no fear about that; I wish we were as certain about the brain.’ ‘Do you think the brain is seriously hurt?’ asked Chicot. ‘We can hardly tell. The iron struck her head as she fell. There is no fracture of the skull, but there is mischief of some kind--rather serious mischief, I fear. No doubt a good deal will depend on care and nursing. You are lucky to have secured Mrs. Mason; I can highly recommend her.’ ‘Frankly, do you think my wife will recover?’ asked Chicot, questioning Sir John Pelham to-day as earnestly as he had questioned George Gerard last night. ‘My dear sir, I hope for the best; but it is a bad case.’ ‘That must mean that it is hopeless,’ thought Chicot, but he only bowed his head gently, and followed the surgeon to the door, where he tried to slip a fee into his hand. ‘No, no, my dear sir, Mr. Smolendo will arrange that little matter,’ said the surgeon, rejecting the money, ‘and very properly too, since your wife was injured in his service.’ ‘I would rather have paid her debts myself,’ answered Chicot, ‘though Heaven knows how long I could have done it. We are never very much beforehand with the world. Oh, by the way, how about that young man upstairs, Mr. Gerard? Do you approve his treatment of the case?’ ‘Very much so; a remarkably clever young man--a man who ought to make rapid way in his profession.’ Sir John Pelham gave a compassionate sigh at the end of his speech, remembering how many young men he had known deserving of success, and how few of them had succeeded, and thinking what a clever and altogether commendable young man he must himself have been to be one of the few.