his, while with the other she put
cooling applications to his head or merely laid her hand upon his
forehead. As long as she was touching him the patient seemed perfectly
content. And again the doctor nodded--and this time he also smiled.

So passed the hours of that long summer day.

CHAPTER XL.

When the light was fading a little, there was a new sound in Hubert
Lepel's sick-room--the rustle of a silk dress, the tripping of little
high-heeled shoes across the floor. Cynthia looked round hastily, ready
to hush the intruder; for Hubert was much quieter than he had been, and
only murmured incoherent sentences from time to time. A fresh outburst
of delirium was of all things to be warded off if possible, and there
was a faint hope that he might sleep. If he slept, his life, humanly
speaking, was saved. But it was hardly likely that sleep would come so
soon.

Cynthia looked round, prepared to rebuke the new-comer--for she had
taken upon herself all the authority of nurse and queen-regent in the
sick man's room; but her eyes fell upon a stranger whose face was yet
not altogether unknown to her. She had seen it years before in the
Beechfield lanes; she remembered it vaguely without knowing to whom it
belonged. In her earlier years at school that face had stood in her
imagination as the type of all that was cold and cruel and fair in
ancient song or story, fable or legend. It had figured as Medusa--as
Circe; the wonderful wicked woman of the Middle Ages had come to her in
visions with just such subtle eyes, such languorous beauty, such fair
white skin and yellow hair; the witch-woman of her weirdest dream had
had the look of Florence Lepel; just as Hubert's far different features,
with the dark melancholy expression of suffering stamped upon them, had
stood for her as those of Fouque's ideal knights, or of Sintram riding
through the dark valley, of Lancelot sinning and repenting, of saint,
hero, martyr, paladin, in turn, until she grew old enough to banish such
foolish dreams. She had been a strangely imaginative child; and these
two faces seemed to have haunted her all her life. That of her hero lay
beside her, stricken with illness, fevered, insensible; that of the evil
woman--for this Cynthia instinctively believed Florence Vane to
be--confronted her with a strange, mocking, malignant smile.

Cynthia put up her hand.

"Hush!" she said quietly. "He is not to be disturbed."

"Are you the nurse?" said Mrs. Van