Afterward, they said it was astounding that she had been able to go back to the Works that night. She must have been in very intense pain. When she came home, the pain conquered to the extent of sending her, at midnight, up to her stepdaughter's room; she was red with fever, and her eyes were glassy. "Got any laudanum, or stuff of that kind?" she demanded. And yet the next day, when the bandages had been changed and there was some slight relief, she persisted in going to the Works again. But the third day she gave up, and attended to her business in the dining-room. "If only Blair would come home," Nannie said, "I think, perhaps, she would be nice to him. Haven't you any idea where he is, Elizabeth?" "Not the slightest," Elizabeth said, indifferently. She herself came every day, and performed what small personal services Mrs. Maitland would permit. Nannie did not amount to much as a nurse, but she was really helpful in writing letters, signing them so exactly in Sarah Maitland's hand that her stepmother was greatly diverted at her proficiency. "I shall have to look after my check-book," she said, with a chuckle. It was not until a week later that they began to be alarmed. It was Harris who first discovered the seriousness of her condition; when he did, the knowledge came like a blow to her household and her office. It was late in the afternoon. Earlier in the day she had had a violent chill, during which she sat crouching and cowering over the dining-room fire, refusing to go to bed, and in a temper that scared Nannie and Harris almost to death. When the chill ceased, she went, flushed with fever, to her own room, saying she was "all right," and banging the door behind her. At about six, when Harris knocked to say that supper was ready, she came out, holding the old German cologne bottle in her hand. "_He_ gave me that," she said, and fondled the bottle against her cheek; then, suddenly she pushed it into Harris's face. "Kiss it!" she commanded, and giggled shrilly. Harris jumped back with a screech. _"Gor!"_ he said; and his knees hit together. The slender green bottle fell smashing to the floor. Mrs. Maitland started, and caught her breath; her mind cleared instantly. "Clean up that mess. The smell of the cologne takes my breath away. I--I didn't know I had it in my hand." That night Elizabeth sent a peremptory letter into space, telling Blair that his mother was seriously ill, and he really ought to be at home. But he had left the hotel to which she sent it, without giving any address, so it lay in a dusty pigeonhole awaiting his return a week later. The delirium came again the next day; then Sarah Maitland cried, because, she said, Nannie had hidden the Noah's ark; "and Blair and I want to play with it," she whined. But a moment afterward she looked at her stepdaughter with kind eyes, and said, as she had said a dozen times in the last ten days, "Lucky you went home that night, my dear."