With a short, sharp cry, she staggered towards the open window, but the heat and the smoke made her dizzy.  She fell against the frame, and uttered a faint cry for help; and then it seemed to her that the body of flame behind leaped upon her like a live thing.  She was conscious for a moment of making a fierce and desperate struggle, and then she knew no more, for black darkness swallowed her up, and her last moment of consciousness was spent in a prayer that the Lord would be with her in death and receive her spirit into His hands.

When next Dinah opened her eyes it was to find a cool wind blowing on her face, and to feel an unwonted motion of the bed (as she supposed it for a moment) on which she was lying.  Everything was bright as day about her, but everything seemed to be dyed the hue of blood.  The next moment sense and memory returned.  She realized that she was lying in the bottom of a boat, which men were rowing with steady strokes.  She saw Lord Desborough sitting in the stern, only a few feet away, still clasping his wife in his arms.  She knew that her head was lying in somebody’s lap, and the next moment she heard a familiar voice saying: 

“Ah! she is better now.  She has opened her eyes!”

“Rachel!” exclaimed Dinah sitting suddenly up, in spite of a sensation of giddiness which made everything swim before her eyes for a few moments; and Rachel Harmer looked down into her face and smiled.

“Dear Dinah, thank Heaven thou art safe!  I hear that thou wert in fearful peril in this burning city; but our good neighbour brought thee forth from the blazing house just as the boards on which thou wert standing gave way beneath thy feet.  Oh, how thankful must we be that our home and our dear ones have all been preserved to us, when half the city is lying in ruins!”

Dinah raised herself up still more at these words, and turned her eyes in the direction of the raging flames on the north side of the river; and only then was she able to realize something of the terrible magnitude of that great conflagration.

The boat was hugging the Southwark shore, for indeed it was scarce safe to approach the other, save from motives of dire necessity, and so thickly did sparks and fragments of blazing matter fall hissing into the river for quite half its width, that boats were chary of adventuring themselves much beyond the Southwark bank, save those conveying persons or goods from some of the many wharfs; and these made straight across with their cargoes as soon as they could quit the shore.

“It is terrible! terrible!” gasped Dinah.  “It is like the mouth of a volcano!  And to think that but a short hour since I was in the midst of it.  O sister, tell me how thou comest to be here.  Tell me how I was snatched from the flames, for, verily, I thought I was their prey.”

Rachel put a trembling arm about her sister’s shoulders as she made reply.

“Truly there were those standing by who thought the same.  But for the brave expedition of our neighbour there, methinks thou wouldst have perished; but let me tell the tale from the beginning.