as leaving, "and please ask my maid to go out
and get some clean bed linen and bring it down here at once--and tell
her to send Mr. Doris here, won't you?"

The doctor promised to attend to these matters at once.

She sat by the bedside of the sufferer bathing his hands and face as if
he were a child, talking to him gently with a mother's grave cadences.
He was now too weak to resist any command, and took his medicine at a
gulp like a young robin.

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon as Mrs. Raimon returned from an errand to the
street she was amazed to find a tall and handsome girl sitting beside
the sick man's bed holding his two cold white hands in both of hers.
There was a singular and thrilling serenity in the stranger's face--a
composure that was exaltation, while Harold, with half-closed eyelids,
lay as if in awe, gazing up into the woman's face.

Mrs. Raimon waited until Harold's eyes closed like a sleepy child's and
the watcher arose--then she drew near and timidly asked:

"Are you Mary?"

"Yes," was the simple reply.

The elder woman's voice trembled. "I am glad you've come. He has called
for you incessantly. You must let me help you--I am Mrs. Raimon, of
Wagon Wheel--I knew him there."

Mary understood the woman's humble attitude, but she did not encourage a
caress. She coldly replied: "I shall be very grateful. He is very ill,
and I shall not leave him till his friends come."

She thought immediately of Jack, and sent a telegram saying: "Harold is
here ill--come at once." She did not know where to reach Mr. Excell, so
could only wait to consult Jack.

Mrs. Raimon remained with her and was so unobtrusively ready to do good
that Mary's heart softened toward her--though she did not like her
florid beauty and her display of jewels.

A telegram from Jack came during the evening: "Do all you can for
Harold. Will reach him to-night."

He came in at eleven o'clock, his face knotted into anxious lines. They
smoothed out as his eyes fell upon Mary, who met him in the hall.

"Oh, I'm glad to see you here," he said brokenly. "How is he--is there
any hope?"

In his presence Mary's composure gave way. "O Jack! If he should die
now----" She laid her head against his sturdy shoulder and for a moment
shook with nervous weakness. Almost before he could speak she recovered
herself. "He only knew me for a few moments. He's delirious again. The
doctor is with him--oh, I can't bear t