d closed on his cloaked
figure, all trace of him was lost.

Nor could Lady Mary Fane add anything of moment to what Lefevre already
knew or guessed. Her account of her adventure (which she gave him in her
father's house, whither she had been removed on the third day) was as
follows: She was returning home from St Thomas's Hospital, dressed
according to her habit when she went there; she had crossed Westminster
Bridge, and was proceeding straight into St James's Park, when she
became aware of a man walking in the same direction as herself, and at
the same pace. She casually noted that he looked like a distinguished
foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death
clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,--a suggestion which melted
the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning
sailor. She was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel
from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a
steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. He turned on her a
pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple,
direct appeal, and their moist softness. He begged her to lead him aside
into a path by which few would pass: he disliked being stared at.
Thinking only of him as a creature in sickness and distress, she obeyed
without a thought for herself. She helped him to sit down upon a bench,
and sat down by him and felt his pulse. He looked at her with an open,
kindly eye, with a simple-seeming gratitude, which held her strangely
(though she only perceived that clearly on looking back). He said to her
suddenly,--

"There was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the Church to its
children--that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to
pray to the Virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend."

She looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his
pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the
thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she
opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "Revived by you," she said to
Lefevre.

He inquired further, as to her sensations before unconsciousness, and
she replied in these striking words: "I felt as if I were strung upon a
complicated system of threads, and as if they tingled and tingled, and
grew tighter to numbness." That answer, he saw, was kindred to the
description given by the young officer of his con