ble sense of injury hurried
her into an outbreak of rage. Her voice, strained for the first time,
lost its tuneful beauty of tone.

"Come and see us in two years' time," she burst out--"and discover the
orphan of the gallows in our house if you can! If your Asylum won't
take her, some other Charity will. Ha, Mr. Governor, I deserve my
disappointment! I ought to have remembered that you are only a jailer
after all. And what is a jailer? Proverbially a brute. Do you hear that?
A brute!"

Her strength suddenly failed her. She dropped back into the chair from
which she had risen, with a faint cry of pain. A ghastly pallor stole
over her face. There was wine on the sideboard; I filled a glass.
She refused to take it. At that time in the day, the Doctor's duties
required his attendance in the prison. I instantly sent for him. After
a moment's look at her, he took the wine out of my hand, and held the
glass to her lips.

"Drink it," he said. She still refused. "Drink it," he reiterated, "or
you will die."

That frightened her; she drank the wine. The Doctor waited for a while
with his fingers on her pulse. "She will do now," he said.

"Can I go?" she asked.

"Go wherever you please, madam--so long as you don't go upstairs in a
hurry."

She smiled: "I understand you, sir--and thank you for your advice."

I asked the Doctor, when we were alone, what made him tell her not to go
upstairs in a hurry.

"What I felt," he answered, "when I had my fingers on her pulse. You
heard her say that she understood me."

"Yes; but I don't know what she meant."

"She meant, probably, that her own doctor had warned her as I did."

"Something seriously wrong with her health?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Heart."

CHAPTER X. MISS CHANCE REAPPEARS.

A week had passed, since the Minister's wife had left me, when I
received a letter from the Minister himself.

After surprising me, as he innocently supposed, by announcing the birth
of his child, he mentioned some circumstances connected with that event,
which I now heard for the first time.

"Within an easy journey of the populous scene of my present labors," he
wrote, "there is a secluded country village called Low Lanes. The rector
of the place is my wife's brother. Before the birth of our infant, he
had asked his sister to stay for a while at his house; and the doctor
thought she might safely be allowed to accept the invitation. Through
some error in the customary calculat