The mansion-house at White Cliffs was all but deserted. The very house servants, pretty mulatto girls, more afraid of destroying their good looks than losing their lives, had retreated to their own dens, feigning illness as an excuse to keep out of the reach of contagion. Catherine was introduced at once into the sick room. That sick room! What mind can conceive, or what pen _should_ describe it. Only those who have nursed a patient through that worst form of the most loathsome pestilence, can realize its revolting horrors. To see any human being looking as the once beautiful Carolyn now looked. Her very features almost obliterated, while——fill up the pause, you who have seen the horrors of that pest. It was worse than any form of illness—it was worse than death and decay. Disgust almost overmastered pity, and Catherine turned away, shuddering with sickness of body and soul. Old Mr. Clifton cast one agonized look upon the ruin, and unable to bear the sight, rushed from the room. Catherine turned to her duty. The wretched patient was tossing about in high fever, and tearing her arms and bosom under the intolerable irritation. That work of destruction must be stopped first Catherine knew. Catherine caught her right hand, and it took all her strength to hold that hand, whose flesh seemed as if it would drop off, under the pressure, while she secured it to the bedstead. Then she captured the other dashing, tossing hand, and confined it in the same manner. And then she looked at the state of her own palms. Oh, offensive duty! No wonder, she thought, that the beautiful Georgia had fled to Richmond, and the two pretty house-maids were extremely ill in their attic! Had _she_ a wish to follow their example? No—for now all selfish fears were lost in deep compassion for the poor, forsaken wreck of beauty, that lay there at her mercy. She returned to her duty. She administered to her patient an opiate, to soothe her restlessness. Took a sponge and tepid water, and thoroughly cleansed the surface of the skin, and anointed face, bosom and arms with a fragrant emollient, to allay the intolerable itching. She then released her hands, and laid them easily upon the counterpane. Lastly, she ventilated and darkened the chamber, and took her seat by the bedside, to fan her patient while she slept. And deep was her satisfaction in watching that quiet, refreshing sleep. It is not my intention to lead my reader through the dismal days that followed in that sick room, until the “secondary fever,” the crisis of the disease, came and passed. Catherine nursed her patient tenderly, faithfully, night and day. Carolyn’s life was spared, but her peerless beauty was gone forever. Her luxuriant, fair hair was all lost, and her head was as bald and discolored as her face—and that!