Marcella was bending over her patient, trying so far as she could to set her straight and comfortable again.  But the woman had begun to mutter once more words in a strange dialect that Marcella did not understand, and could no longer be kept still.  The temperature was rising again, and another fit of delirium was imminent.  Marcella could only hope that she and Mrs. Levi between them would be able to hold her till the doctor came.  When she had done all that was in her power, she sat beside the poor tossing creature, controlling and calming her as best she could, while Mrs. Levi poured into her shrinking ear the story of the woman’s illness and of Dr. Blank’s conduct of it.  Marcella’s feeling, as she listened, was made up of that old agony of rage and pity!  The sufferings of the poor, because they were poor—­these things often, still, darkened earth and heaven for her.  That wretch would have been quite capable, no doubt, of conducting himself decently and even competently, if he had been called to some supposed lady in one of the well-to-do squares which made the centre of this poor and crowded district.

“Hullo, nurse!” said a cheery voice; “you seem to have got a bad case.”

The sound was as music in Marcella’s ears.  The woman she held was fast becoming unmanageable—­had just shrieked, first for “poison,” then for a “knife,” to kill herself with, and could hardly be prevented by the combined strength of her nurse and Mrs. Levi, now from throwing herself madly out of bed, and now from tearing out her black hair in handfuls.  The doctor—­a young Scotchman with spectacles, and stubbly red beard—­came quickly up to the bed, asked Marcella a few short questions, shrugged his shoulders over her dry report of Dr. Blank’s proceedings, then took out a black case from his pocket, and put his morphia syringe together.

For a long time no result whatever could be obtained by any treatment.  The husband was sent for, and came trembling, imploring doctor and nurse, in the intervals of his wife’s paroxysms, not to leave him alone.

Marcella, absorbed in the tragic horror of the case, took no note of the passage of time.  Everything that the doctor suggested she carried out with a deftness, a tenderness, a power of mind, which keenly affected his professional sense.  Once, the poor mother, left unguarded for an instant, struck out with a wild right hand.  The blow caught Marcella on the cheek, and she drew back with a slight involuntary cry.

“You are hurt,” said Dr. Angus, running up to her.

“No, no,” she said, smiling through the tears that the shock had called into her eyes, and putting him rather impatiently aside; “it is nothing.  You said you wanted some fresh ice.”

And she went into the back room to get it.

The doctor stood with his hands in his pockets, studying the patient.

“You will have to send her to the infirmary,” he said to the husband; “there is nothing else for it.”