the world of illusions, and sometimes could not see them.  Often he asked for Grace most piteously when she was looking at him through her tears, and trying hard to win him to her with her voice.  On these occasions he always called her Mary.  One unlucky day that Grace and Julia were his only attendants he became very restless and wild, said he had committed a great crime, and the scaffold was being prepared for him.  “Hark!” said he; “don’t you hear the workmen?  Curse their hammers; their eternal tip-tapping goes through my brain.  The scaffold!  What would the old man say?  A Clifford hung!  Never!  I’ll save him and myself from that.”

Then he sprang out of bed and made a rush at the window.  It was open, unluckily, and he had actually got his knee through when Grace darted to him and seized him, screaming to Julia to help her.  Julia did her best, especially in the way of screaming.  Grace’s muscle and resolution impeded the attempt no more; slowly, gradually, he got both knees upon the window-sill.  But the delay was everything.  In came a professional nurse.  She flung her arms round Walter’s waist and just hung back with all her weight.  As she was heavy, though not corpulent, his more active strength became quite valueless; weight and position defeated him hopelessly; and at last he sank exhausted into the nurse’s arms, and she and Grace carried him to bed like a child.

Of course, when it was all over, half a dozen people came to the rescue.  The woman told what had happened, the doctor administered a soothing draught, the patient became very quiet, then perspired a little, then went to sleep, and the cheerful doctor declared that he would be all the better for what he called this little outbreak.  But Grace sat there quivering for hours, and Colonel Clifford installed two new nurses that very evening.  They were pensioners of his—­soldiers who had been invalided from wounds, but had long recovered, and were neither of them much above forty.  They had some experience, and proved admirable nurses—­quiet, silent, vigilant as sentinels.

That burst of delirium was the climax.  Walter began to get better after that.  But a long period of convalescence was before him; and the doctor warned them that convalescence has its very serious dangers, and that they must be very careful, and, above all, not irritate nor even excite him.

All this time torments of another kind had been overpowered but never suppressed in poor Grace’s mind; and these now became greater as Walter’s danger grew less and less.

What would be the end of all this?  Here she was installed, to her amazement, in Clifford Hall, as Walter’s wife, and treated, all of a sudden, with marked affection and respect by Colonel Clifford, who had hitherto seemed to abhor her.  But it was all an illusion; the whole house of cards must come tumbling down some day.

Some days before the event last described Hope had said to her,