or came from above to say
that Mrs. McGillavorich had heard of Nancy's arrival and wanted to see
her immediately, adding, with some philosophy:

"It excites her so not to get her own way, that it couldn't excite her
more to have it; so just go up, my dear, go right up!"

In this way, at the time of their lives when each was least prepared
for trial and bitterly unhappy, it fell that Danvers and Nancy were
thrown together in an intimacy impossible under other circumstances;
relieving each other in the watching, sitting together by the bedside
through the long hours of the night, or walking back and forth in each
other's company to the little village on needful errands for the small
household. In the tiny dining-room Nancy served at one side of the
table while Danvers carved at the other, the suggestiveness of such an
arrangement sending disordered longings to the hearts of both.

One dreadful night when Janet, who was barely conscious, clung to
Nancy's hand, although the girl's head ached miserably and she had had
no sleep for forty-eight hours, she showed by a sign to Danvers her
intention to remain by the bedside in the great arm-chair. Her
weariness and suffering made his heart yearn over her, and he leaned
forward from the place he sat to put his hand upon her aching brow. His
soothing touch, or perhaps a cause more subtle still, comforted her,
and she fell asleep, to find the gray light of morn and Danvers,
motionless beside her, having sat all those weary hours with his arm in
a position which it must have tortured him to maintain. On the instant
of her awakening she said, in a whisper:

"Your poor arm, Danvers! Your poor arm!"

And the strain of his mind showed in the answer:

"I would lose an arm altogether for what I have had to-night."

At the end of the fifth day Janet was so far recovered that she was
able to sit up for a while against the pillows, and from this on her
convalescence was a rapid one, although the tenth day had gone by when
she told Danvers, with her customary frankness, to be off about his
business. The evening before his departure, Nancy and he sat in Janet's
room, fearful of being alone together for even a minute, and past
eleven they parted for the night, in the old lady's presence, speaking
their farewells in gay voices, with many assurances of meeting again in
Edinburgh at some near time.

"I went to my room, Jock," Nancy said, when she told me this tale,
"locked and bolted the d