She wandered off, muttering quickly and incoherently as she threw her head from side to side for a time; and then, utterly exhausted, seemed to sleep. "Has--has Frank Burnett been?" whispered her father, looking timidly at Claire. She shook her head sadly. "No," said Denville; "he will not come. He would not even if she were to die. She must get better; and we will do as you have often said: go right away, where we are not known, and where we shall be safe." In spite of herself, Claire darted at him a horrified look, which he saw and winced at, as he rose feebly, and began to pace the room, stopping at length before the window to gaze out at the sunlit sea. "Strange!" he murmured; "the world so beautiful, and my life one dreary course of agony and pain. Claire, what do the doctors really think-- that she will live?" "I pray God they do!" said Claire solemnly. "Yes; she must live and repent. There is pardon for those who suffer and repent, my child. Don't look at me like that; you do not know. Claire, is this my punishment? Surely no worse suffering can befall me now." "Dear father," whispered Claire; "let the past be dead." "Hush!" he cried, grasping her hand; "Don't talk of death, girl--here. She must live, and we will go away before--before it is too late. Has Morton been?" Claire shook her head mournfully. "No; he would not come. He must not come," said the old man quickly. "He is well placed, and he must not come near such pariahs as we are. No, no; don't look like that," he whispered passionately. "Why should he drag himself down? It is too much to ask of the boy." He went on tip-toe to the bed, and took the little feverish hand that lay outside the coverlid, and kissed and stroked it as he muttered to himself: "Poor little wandering lamb! So weak and timid, and ready to go astray; but you are safe here with me. Oh, how wrong everything is!" Claire glanced at him, half stunned by this new trouble; and, as her father talked of punishment, and the impossibility of a greater trouble than this befalling them, a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart, and a vague, black shadow of another horror came back with double force, she shuddered, and devoted herself more and more to her task of attending the sister sick apparently unto death. As she sat there, with the shadow of death impending, after the first shock, it seemed to lose its terrors, and she found herself looking upon it as less dreadful than she had been wont to do. There was rest in it, and a cessation from the pain and suffering that had so long been her portion; and, as the hours rolled on, her throbbing brain grew dull and heavy, her own suffering lighter, and she seemed better able to attend to the sufferer at her side.