d's employer. Both Jenkins and his wife
adored Mr. Lepel, and the thought that he might die in his illness had
been agony to them--and not on their own account alone. They genuinely
believed in Miss West's power of soothing and calming him, and Mrs.
Jenkins could not do enough for the girl's comfort.

"You'll take off your things here, miss, will you not? And then I'll
take you to Mr. Lepel's own room. But wouldn't you like a glass of wine
or a cup of tea or something before you go in? You look terrible tired
and harassed like, miss; and what you are going to see isn't exactly
what will do you good. Poor Mr. Lepel he do look dreadful--and that's
the long and the short of it!"

"I don't want anything, thank you, Mrs. Jenkins," said Cynthia, faintly
smiling; "and I should like to go to Mr. Lepel at once."

"Have you ever seen anything of sick people, miss, or done any nursing?"

"Never, Mrs. Jenkins."

"Don't be too frightened then, miss, when you first see Mr. Lepel.
People with fevers often look worse than they really are."

Cynthia set her lips; if she was frightened, she would not show it, she
resolved.

Then, after some slight delay, she was admitted to Hubert's room; and
there, in spite of her resolution, at first she stood aghast.

It startled her to perceive that, although she knew his face so well,
she might not have recognised it in an unaccustomed place. It was
discolored, and the eyes were bloodshot and wandering; the hair had been
partially cut away from his head, and the stubble of an unshaven beard
showed itself on cheeks and chin. Any romance that might have existed in
the mind of a girl of twenty concerning her lover's illness was struck
dead at once and forever. He was ill--terribly ill and delirious; he
looked at her with a madman's eyes, and his face was utterly changed;
his voice too, as he raised it in the constant stream of incoherent talk
that escaped his lips, was hoarse and rasping and unnatural. Anything
less interesting, less attractive to a weak soul than this delirious
fever-stricken man could not well be imagined; but Cynthia's soul was
anything but weak.

She was conscious that never in her life had she loved Hubert Lepel so
intensely, so devotedly as she loved him now. Something of the maternal
instinct awakened within her at the sight of his great need. He had no
one to minister to his more subtle wants--no one to tend him out of pure
love and sympathy. The man Jenkins, who sat