"He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago,
but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter.
Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox."

"Can you call a carriage for my aunt?" asked Robert. He went close
to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. "I am going to
have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be
willing to go home with you in it."

"Of course I will," replied Fanny.

"You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed
about," Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his
aunt's ear.

Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she
was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the
window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, "Robert, you must
come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here
and see him myself."

"Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia," he replied, soothingly. He met the
doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping
mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect
that--why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for
that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle
after her so many years? But he merely said:

"There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further
when she is in such a state of mind, but--" Then he paused
significantly.

"You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?" said
Robert.

"Mighty poor," replied the doctor.

Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the
carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it
all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible
fact with an infinite pain.

"Have they got the man that did it?" asked the doctor.

"I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley," replied Robert. "I hope
to God they have." Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety,
of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? "I must go back to
the factory," he said, hurriedly. "I will be back here in an hour or
so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you
can!"

Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was
full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot
which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered
the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the
street corner, and jumped