But there was nothing to be seen. "Oh, my God! I thank Thee, I thank Thee. Oh, my God! My Christ," she cried, incoherently, as she fell weeping on the child, covering it with passionate kisses. Then she rose and said wildly, "Jane! Jane! please look and see that there is no mark--no wound--nothing. I cannot see, my eyes are so dim. Please look carefully, and make quite, quite certain of it." The nurse, thinking to humour her poor crazed mistress, pretended to examine the baby, though her own eyes were really as dim with tears as were the mother's. "No, ma'am, I assure you that there is nothing at all--nothing. The little darling is all right; but now you must go to bed, poor dear; you will be very ill if you don't. For your little baby's sake go to bed, and try and rest." Mary, now as docile as a child, allowed herself to be put into her bed, and sobbed herself asleep--a broken slumber full of frightful dreams, from which she awoke into as painful a delirium. CHAPTER XXX. THE LAST OF SUSAN RILEY. When Susan was outside Dr. Duncan's house, she walked away rapidly, careless whither, cursing and hating herself and all the world besides, in the sense of the ignominious manner of her failure in her plans. She was not yet fifty yards from the house, when she perceived, hobbling towards her along the pavement, the same stooping, shabby, old woman whom she had observed near Mrs. Harris's shop a few days previously. In her irritable mood, Susan would not move aside for the old creature, but pushed roughly against her as she passed. But to her surprise, the apparently feeble hag, instead of reeling aside, or even falling, as she had half expected her to do, suddenly extended her hand and seized Susan by the arm with so firm and nervous a grip that it stopped her short, notwithstanding the speed at which she was walking. Susan turned round fiercely to face her, and then was astonished to see every sign of decrepitude disappear from the woman who held her. The stooping back straightened; the hands no longer trembled with the weakness of extreme old age; it was a tall, middle-aged woman who stood erect before her; and she recognized the stern, pale face of Catherine King, whose eyes were looking intently into hers as if reading her inmost thoughts. Unnerved by her recent discomfiture, Susan shrank beneath the strong grasp and keen eye of her former Chief, and was too startled by her unexpected appearance to speak a word. These few months had worked a great change in the features of Catherine King. She appeared much older; her hair was much whiter; and though her eye had lost little of its old fire, the light in it was unnatural as of fever, and there were several signs about her to indicate that some slow but fatal disease had taken hold of her.