Mrs. Temple's and into my heart. There
she was now enthroned, deified; that she would always be there I
accepted. That I would never say or do anything not in consonance with
her standards I knew. That I would suffer much I was sure, but the lees
of that suffering I should hoard because they came from her.

What might have been I tried to put away. There was the moment, I
thought, when our souls had met in the little parlor in the Rue Bourbon.
I should never know. This I knew--that we had labored together to bring
happiness into other lives.

Then came another thought to appall me. Unmindful of her own safety, she
had nursed me back to life through all the horrors of the fever. The
doctor had despaired, and I knew that by the very force that was in her
she had saved me. She was here now, in this house, and presently she
would be coming back to my bedside. Painfully I turned my face to the
wall in a torment of humiliation--I had called her by her name. I would
see her again, but I knew not whence the strength for that ordeal was to
come.

CHAPTER XIII

A MYSTERY

I knew by the light that it was evening when I awoke. So prisoners mark
the passing of the days by a bar of sun light. And as I looked at the
green trees in the courtyard, vaguely troubled by I knew not what, some
one came and stood in the doorway. It was Nick.

"You don't seem very cheerful," said he; "a man ought to be who has been
snatched out of the fire."

"You seem to be rather too sure of my future," I said, trying to smile.

"That's more like you," said Nick. "Egad, you ought to be happy--we all
ought to be happy--she's gone."

"She!" I cried. "Who's gone?"

"Madame la Vicomtesse," he replied, rubbing his hands as he stood over
me. "But she's left instructions with me for Lindy as long as Monsieur
de Carondelet's Bando de Buen Gobierno. You are not to do this, and you
are not to do that, you are to eat such and such things, you are to be
made to sleep at such and such times. She came in here about an hour ago
and took a long look at you before she left."

"She was not ill?" I said faintly.

"Faith, I don't know why she was not," he said. "She has done enough to
tire out an army. But she seems well and fairly happy. She had her joke
at my expense as she went through the court-yard, and she reminded me
that we were to send a report by Andre every day."

Chagrin, depression, relief, bewilderment, all were struggling within me.

"Where