mily doctor, who had known her
from babyhood. "She has a splendid constitution and will pull through.
But let her have no worries of any kind."

So they left her alone, except in the matter of ministering occasional
nourishment, which she took with the mechanical obedience of a child.

For two days Rosanne lay there, silent and strange. The third day her
sickness took an acute form. She tossed and moaned and called out in
her pain, her face twisted with torture. Her mind appeared to remain
clear.

"Mother, I believe I am dying," she said, after one such spell, during
the afternoon. "I feel as if something is tearing itself loose from my
very being. Does it hurt like this when the soul is trying to escape
from the body?"

"I have sent for the doctor again, darling."

"It is nothing he can cure. It is _here_, and _here_ that I suffer."
She touched her head and her heart. "But, oh, my body, too, is
tortured!"

She lay still a little while, moaning softly to herself while her
mother stood by, sick with distress; then she said:

"Send for Denis Harlenden, mother. I must see him before I die."

Mrs. Ozanne asked no question. Her woman's instinct told her much that
Rosanne had left unsaid. Within half an hour, Harlenden was being
shown into the drawing-room, where she awaited him. He came in with no
sign upon his face of the anxiety in his heart. This was the fourth
day since he had seen Rosanne, and she had sent him no word.

"Sir Denis, my daughter is very ill. I don't know why she should be
calling out for you----" She faltered. Marks of the last few days'
anxiety were writ large upon her, but she was not wanting in a certain
patient dignity.

Harlenden strode over and took her hands in his as he would have taken
the hands of his own mother.

"It is because we love each other," he said gently, "and because, as
soon as she will let me, I am going to marry her."

A ray of thankfulness shone across her features.

"Marriage! I don't know, Sir Denis; but, if you love her I can tell
you something that will help you to understand her better, and perhaps
you can help her."

Briefly, and in broken words, she related to him the strange incident
of Rosanne's babyhood, its seeming effect upon her character, and the
Malay's extraordinary words of two days before. She did not disguise
from him that she believed Rosanne guilty, whether consciously or
unconsciously, of many dark things, but she pleaded f