he thought of Mrs. May nard's condition; but
she had not the courage to invoke the intelligence that ignored her
so completely, and she struggled in silence with such disheartening
auguries as her theoretical science enabled her to make.

The next day was a Sunday, and the Sabbath hush which always hung over
Jocelyn's was intensified to the sense of those who ached between hope
and fear for the life that seemed to waver and flicker in that still
air. Dr. Mulbridge watched beside his patient, noting every change with
a wary intelligence which no fact escaped and no anxiety clouded; alert,
gentle, prompt; suffering no question, and absolutely silent as to all
impressions. He allowed Grace to remain with him when she liked, and
let her do his bidding in minor matters; but when from time to time she
escaped from the intolerable tension in which his reticence and her own
fear held her, he did not seem to see whether she went or came. Toward
nightfall she met him coming out of Mrs. Maynard's room, as she drew
near in the narrow corridor.

"Where is your friend--the young man--the one who smokes?" he asked, as
if nothing unusual had occupied him. "I want him to give me a cigar."

"Dr. Mulbridge," she said, "I will not bear this any longer. I must know
the worst--you have no right to treat me in this way. Tell me now--tell
me instantly: will she live?"

He looked at her with an imaginable apprehension of hysterics, but as
she continued firm, and placed herself resolutely in his way, he relaxed
his scrutiny, and said, with a smile, "Oh, I think so. What made you
think she would n't?"

She drew herself aside, and made way far him.

"Go!" she cried. She would have said more, but her indignation choked
her.

He did not pass at once, and he did not seem troubled at her anger.
"Dr. Breen," he said, "I saw a good deal of pneumonia in the army, and
I don't remember a single case that was saved by the anxiety of the
surgeon."

He went now, as people do when they fancy themselves to have made a
good point; and she heard him asking Barlow for Libby, outside, and then
walking over the gravel toward the stable. At that moment she doubted
and hated him so much that she world have been glad to keep Libby from
talking or even smoking with him. But she relented a little toward him
afterwards, when he returned and resumed the charge of his patient with
the gentle, vigilant cheerfulness which she had admired in him from the
first, omitt