form and features of his patient, as if each individual
nerve and muscle were being threaded with quick wire, a sharp rush of
breath filled her chest, and she opened her eyes and closed them again.

"That will do," said Lefevre in a whisper, and, releasing his hands, he
sank back in a chair. "It's a success," said he, turning his eyes with a
thin smile on the house-physician, and then closing them in a deadly
exhaustion.

Chapter VI.

At the Bedside of the Doctor.

For the first time since he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that
night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took
him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a
while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him
in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that
there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution;
that he was only exhausted--though exhausted very much; and that all he
needed was rest, sleep, nourishment,--sleep above all.

Lefevre slept the night through like a child, and awoke refreshed,
though still very weak. He was bewildered with his condition for a
moment or two, till he recalled the moving and exhausting experiences of
the day before, and then he was suffused with a glow of
elation,--elation which was not all satisfaction in the successful
performance of a new experiment, nor in a good deed well done. His
friend came to see him early, to anticipate the risk of his rising. He
insisted that he should keep his bed, for that day at least, if not for
a second and a third day. He reported that the patient was doing well;
that she had asked with particularity, and had been informed with equal
particularity, concerning the method of her recovery, upon which she was
much bemused, and asked to see her physician.

"It is a pity she was told," said Lefevre; "it is not usual to tell a
patient such a thing, and I meant it to be kept secret, at least till it
was better established." But for all his protest he was again suffused
with that new sense of inward joy.

Alone, and lying idle in bed, it was but natural--it was almost
inevitable--that the doctor's thoughts should begin to run upon the
strange events and suspicions of the past two days; and their current
setting strongly in one channel, made him long to be resolved whether or
no the Man of the Crowd, the author of yesterday's outrage, the "M.
Dolaro" of whom the det