y better nurses than men, and Mr. Thornton
is quite worn out, but it does not make much difference now; the lady--"

Daisy did not hear the last part of the sentence, and, bidding him
good-night, she went back to the hotel as swiftly as she had left it,
while the doctor stood watching the flutter of her white dress,
wondering how she found it out, and if she would "tell and raise thunder
generally."

"Of course not. I know her better than that," he said to himself. "Poor
woman [referring then to Julia], nothing, I fear, can help her now."

Meanwhile Daisy reached the hotel, and without going to her own room,
bade Sarah tell her the way to No. ----.

"What! Oh, Miss McDonald! You surely are not--" Sarah gasped, clutching
at the dress, which her mistress took from her grasp, saying:

"Yes, I am going to see that lady. I know her, or of her, and I'm not
afraid. Must we let her die alone?"

"But your face--your beautiful face," Sarah said, and then Daisy did
hesitate a moment, and, glancing into a hall mirror, wondered how the
face she saw there, and which she knew was beautiful, would look scarred
and disfigured as she had seen faces in New York.

There was a momentary conflict, and then, with an inward prayer that
Heaven would protect her, she passed on down the narrow hall and knocked
softly at No. ----, while Sarah stood wringing her hands in genuine
distress, and feeling as if her young mistress had gone to certain ruin.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE SICK-ROOM

Julia had the smallpox, not varioloid, but the veritable thing itself,
in its most aggravated form. Where she took it, or when, she did not
know, nor did it matter. She had it, and for ten days she had seen no
one but her husband and physician, and had no care but such as Guy could
give her. He had been unremitting in his attention. Tender and gentle as
a woman, he had nursed her night and day, with no thought for himself
and the risk he ran. It was a bad disease at the best, and now in its
worst type it was horrible, but Julia bore up bravely, thinking always
more of others than of herself, and feeling so glad that Providence had
sent them to those out-of-the-way rooms, where she had at first thought
she could not pass a night comfortably. Her children were in the room
adjoining, and she could hear their little voices as they played
together, or asked for their mamma and why they must not see her. Alas!
they would never see her again; she knew it now,