"Pamela!" she cried out. "Oh, Pam, don't blame me!" She never knew how the sight of her standing before them, like a poor little ghost, with her white, appealing eyes, touched one of these two women to the heart. There was something pathetic in her very figure--something indescribably so in her half-humble, half-fearing voice. Pamela rose up from the horse-hair sofa, and went to her. Each of the three faces was pale enough; but Pamela had the trouble of these two, as well as her own anxiousness in her eyes. "Theo," she said to her, "what have you done? Don't you understand what a mad act you have been guilty of?" But her voice was not as sharp as usual, and it even softened before she finished speaking. She made Theo sit down, and gave her a glass of water to steady her nervousness. She could not be angry even at such indiscretion as this--in the face of the tremulous hands and pleading eyes. "Where was Lady Throckmorton?" she said. "What was she doing, to let you come alone?" "She was away," put in Theo, faintly. "And the telegram said he was dying, Pam, and--I didn't come alone quite. I brought Splaighton with me." "You had no right to come at all," said Pam, trying to speak with asperity, and failing miserably. "Mr. Oglethorpe is nothing to you. They should have sent for Miss Gower at once." But the fact was the little doctor had searched in vain for the exact address of the lady whose letters he found in his patient's portmanteau, when examining his papers to find some clue to the whereabouts of his friends, and it was by the merest chance that he had discovered it in the end from Theo's own lips, and so had secretly written to Broome street, in his great respect and admiration for this pretty young nurse, who was at once so youthful and indescribably innocent. In her trouble and anxious excitement, Theo had not once thought of doing so herself, until during the last two days, and now there was no necessity for the action. "And Mr. Oglethorpe," interposed Miss Gower. "He is up-stairs," Theo answered. "The doctor thinks that perhaps he may be saved by careful nursing. I did what I could," and she stopped with a curious click in her throat. The simple sight of Priscilla Gower, with her calm, handsome face, and calm, handsome presence, set her so far away from him and she had seemed so near to him during the few last days--she felt so poor and weak through the contrast. And Pamela was right. She was nothing to him--he was nothing to her. This was his wife who had come to him now, and she--what was she?