“Well, what do you say to my plan, eh, why don’t you speak?” demanded the grim old lady, sharply. “It--will--not--answer. He is at the other side of the world. I should not know where to send for him, and I am quite sure he would refuse to have any more to do with his faithless wife,” Louise answered, slowly, with averted face. “The little baggage! I should not blame him!” snapped Mrs. Barry, her seamed and wrinkled face working with anger. She went on, impatiently: “Well, then we must think of some other plan. That marriage must never take place.” “No, they must be kept apart. We must think of something else,” Louise answered, but it was easier proposing plans than carrying them out. Fate, that had played poor Molly so many ill turns in her brief life, seemed relenting a little now. None of the plans which the plotters proposed to each other could be carried out, for Cecil Laurens did not come home with Doctor Charley, although he was daily and hourly expected, and Louise was unable to gain an entrance into The Acacias, although she called daily and tried to send in her card to Cecil’s mother. The servants, mindful of Phebe’s threat, always shut the door in her face and refused to take cards or messages. “Young Mrs. Laurens is lying ill, and the family receive no visitors,” was what she heard daily, and old Mrs. Barry, when she called one day, fared no better. “She must really be sick,” Louise said, when her aunt returned from the fruitless attempt, and she added to herself with a guilty blush: “I hope she will die!” To the faithful Phebe, who hung anxiously over the sick-bed, it seemed as if this wish would come true, for Molly was very ill after she recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen from sheer terror of her foe. A physician had to be summoned at once, and he pronounced the patient in a dangerous condition, and charged Phebe to be very careful lest by the slightest neglect that young life should be lost. Phebe carried out his orders with patient, unswerving devotion, knowing well that in this dark hour she was the sufferer’s only friend. And indeed she had to fight for this position, and hold it in the teeth of the elder Mrs. Laurens’ grim displeasure, for Louise’s artful tale had so wrought upon that lady’s feelings that she immediately sought out Phebe and told her to take her discharge with a mouth’s wages instead of the customary warning. “Indeed, then, mem, with all due respect to your gray hair, I can’t take my discharge from anybody but Mr. Cecil himself. He it was that engaged me, mem, and I promised him I’d be a faithful servant to my young mistress, so how could I desert her now in her trouble, when every one has gone against her and she hasn’t a friend but me?” expostulated Phebe. “You are impertinent, woman!” Mrs. Laurens exclaimed, with a frown. “I’m sorry you think so, mem; I don’t mean to be so, but I can’t desert my mistress now.” “I shall engage a sick-nurse,” Mrs. Laurens said loftily.