"Well! let us go and see Mary now," she said. The girl had been placed in a small private room by herself. When they came to it the door was opened by the nurse who was in charge of the patient. Catherine looked keenly at the young woman, then turning to Dr. Duncan, exclaimed: "I thought you told me the other day that Miss Riley was nursing my niece." "She has been nursing her," replied the doctor, "but we have sent her away for a holiday. She has been much overworked lately, and is far from well." "Indeed!" exclaimed Catherine. "Yes, she is not at all well, and her anxiety about your niece, who is a great friend of hers, seems to have upset her very much." This information very much puzzled Catherine. "Susan is not the person to get overworked and ill," she reflected, "and still less the person to get anxious about a friend, and she's gone off without giving me any notice. There is some mystery in all this, but I will get to the bottom of it." She entered the room and walked softly up to the side of the bed. The room was darkened, but there was sufficient light to enable her to clearly distinguish the features of the sick girl. Mary was lying there sleeping peacefully. She had been in this condition for some hours. It was the first natural and refreshing sleep that had come to her fevered brain since her attack. Nature was working her remedy in her own fashion. Catherine stooped and looked intently at the quiet face. She saw that it was pinched and white and that a circle of dark purple surrounded the closed eyelids. She also noticed how thin had become the arm on which the head was lying, the poor head off which all the beautiful hair had been shorn close. But there was a happy smile on the half-parted lips of the sleeping girl, her dreams were sweet. Catherine looked at her for several minutes without moving or speaking. All her anger and jealousy melted away now, before her great pity and her great love. She asked herself reproachfully how she could have harboured one hard thought about her darling. The poor child could not help loving the man who had befriended her, and now he was dead. It was all the more incumbent on herself to cherish and console the poor girl in her affliction. At last she made a sign to the doctor that she was ready to go, and they left the room with silent tread. She did not speak till they were once more in the waiting-room, then she asked, simply: "How often may I see her?" "Every day," he replied. "Then I will come every day, and oh, Dr. Duncan!"--she seized his hand passionately--"I can see you are a good man. She is all the world to me. Do your best to make her well again, spare no pains, I implore you! But of course you will do all that; pardon my folly, but I love her so much, I forget what I am saying." "You can rely on me to do my best I think, Mrs. King," he replied, as he pressed her hand.