for the first two or three days.

"I could not sleep, you know," she said to the doctor, her great
pathetic eyes filling with tears. "Please let me stay until Lady
Throckmorton comes, at least."

So she stayed, and watched, and waited, quite alone, for nearly a week.
But it seemed a much longer time to her. The poor, handsome face changed
so often in even those few days, and her passions of despair and hope
were so often changed with it. She never thought of Priscilla Gower. Her
love and fear were too strong to allow of her giving a thought to
anything on earth but Denis Oglethorpe. Perhaps her only consolation had
something of guilt in it; but it was so poor and desperate a comfort,
this wretched one of hearing him speak to and of her in his fever and
delirium.

"My poor, handsome Theo," he would say. "Why, my beauty, there are tears
in your eyes. What a scoundrel I am, if I have brought them there. What!
the rose-colored satin again, my darling! Don't wear the rose-colored
satin, Theo. It hurts my eyes. For God's sake, Priscilla, forgive me!"

And yet, even while they added to her terror, these poor ravings were
some vague comfort, since they told her that he loved her. More than
once her friend the doctor entered the room, and found her kneeling by
the bedside, holding the unresponsive hand, with a white face and wide,
tearless eyes; and seeing her thus, he read clearly that his pretty,
inexperienced _protege_ had more at stake than he had even at first
fancied.

It was about six days after Theodora North had arrived at St. Quentin,
when, sitting at her post one morning, she heard the lumbering stage
stop before the inn door. She rose and went to the window, half
mechanically, half anxiously. She had been expecting Lady Throckmorton,
for so long a time, that it seemed almost impossible that it could be
she. But strangers had evidently alighted. There was a bustle of
servants below, and one of them was carrying a leathern trunk into the
house immediately under her window. It was a leathern trunk, rather
shabby than otherwise, and on its side was an old label, which, being
turned toward her, she could read plainly. She read it, and gave a faint
start. It bore, in dingy black letters, the word "Downport."

She had hardly time to turn round, before there was a summons at the
door, and without waiting to be answered, Splaighton entered, looking at
once decorous and injured.

"There are two ladies in the parlor, m