"No, no--no, no?" she cried excitedly; "let it all pass now, Antony-- dear Antony, for my sake." "I like you, Linny," I said; "but I like dear old Revitts, too. He has been the best of friends to me, and I don't see why a friend of yours should escape after serving him like this." "He--he is not a friend of mine now," she said, half hysterically; "but, dear Antony, I could not bear for him to be punished. It was in a fit of passion. I had made him angry first. Please, please don't say any more--I cannot bear it!" She sank down on the hearth-rug, covering her face with her hands and sobbing bitterly, while I felt, boy-like, powerless to say anything to comfort her, till I exclaimed: "Well, I won't tell or say anything I know, Linny, if you will keep your word to Stephen." "I will--indeed I will, dear Antony," she cried, starting up and catching both my hands. "I was very, very foolish, but I know better now, and it--it--it is all past." She said those last words in such a piteous, despairing way, looking so heart-broken, that my sympathies were now all on her side, and I promised her again that I would not tell Revitts or the police that she was the girl who had been in question. I repented of my promise later on, but at my time of life it was not likely that I should know how ready a woman who loves is to forgive the lapses of him who has won her heart, and of course I could not foresee the complications that would arise. The surgeon came again, as he had promised, and after the examination of the patient, ordered some ice to be obtained to apply to his head, and directly he had gone I started off to fetch it, thinking as I did so that Hallett would soon be with us. I was not long in getting a lump of bright, cold, clear ice, and on hurrying back, I heard voices in the room, when, to my surprise and delight, there stood Mary, but looking anything but pleased. She had thrown a large bundle on the floor, her large Paisley shawl across the foot of the bed, her umbrella on the table, and a basket crammed full of something or another was on a chair. As for Mary herself, she was standing, very red in the face, her arms akimbo, her bonnet awry, and a fierce angry look in her eyes, before poor Linny, who was shrinking away from her, evidently in no little alarm. "Oh, Antony?" she cried, "I'm so glad you've come! Who is this woman?" "Who's this woman, indeed!" cried Mary, now boiling over in her wrath; "`this woman' indeed! Perhaps you'll tell her that I'm a poor deceived, foolish, trusting creature, who left her place at a moment's notice to come and nuss him, and then find as I ain't wanted, and that he's already got his fine doll of a madam to wait on him." "Oh, Mary!" I cried; "you dear foolish old thing!" "Yes, of course, that's what I said I was, Master Antony, and even you turn agen me. But I might have known that such a fellow as William Revitts would have half-a-dozen fine madams ready to marry him."