“He came down by a late train last night, I understand.  He makes but a flying tour through the country, and cannot stay at any one place,” the venerable doctor explained.  And then he touched the bell again.

The same man who had let our party in came to the door to answer the call.

“Say to Sister Susannah that I would like to see her here,” said the doctor.

The man went out and was presently succeeded by a sweet faced, middle aged woman in a black dress and a neat white cap.

“Here are the friends of the young lady who was brought in yesterday morning.  Will you please to take them to the bedside of your patient?”

The Protestant sister nodded pleasantly and led off the visitors.

As they went up the main staircase they heard the front door bell ring, the door opened, and the Dean of Olivet, with some gentlemen in his company, entered the hall.

Our party, after one glance, passed up the stairs, through an upper hall and a corridor, and paused before a door which Sister Susannah opened.

They entered a small, clean, neat room, where, clothed in a white wrapper, reclining in a white easy chair, beside a white curtained window, and near a white bed, sat Rose Stillwater.  She was looking, not only pale, but sallow—­as she had never looked before.

Rose Stillwater held out one hand to Mr. Rockharrt and one to Cora Rothsay, in silence and with a faint smile.

The sister, seeing this recognition, set two cane bottomed chairs for the visitors and then went out, leaving them alone with the patient.

“Good Lord, my dear, how did all this come about?” inquired old Aaron Rockharrt, as he sank heavily upon one of the chairs, making it creak under him.

“It was while we stood in the crowd.  I was pressed almost out of breath.  Then the terrible pang shot through my head, and I ceased to struggle and let everybody pass before me.  I dropped down on one of the benches.  I had taken a morphia pellet before I left the hotel.  I had the medicine in my pocket.  I took another then—­”

“Very wrong, my dear.  Very wrong, my dear, to meddle with that drug, without the advice of a physician.”

“Yes; I know it now, but I did not know it then.  The second pellet stopped my headache, and I went to the ladies’ dressing room to recover myself a little, so as to be able to write a telegram saying that I would follow you by the next train, but there a stupor came over me, and I knew no more until I awoke late last night and found myself here.”

“How perilous, my child!  In that stupor you might have been robbed or kidnapped by persons who might have pretended to be your relations and carried you off and murdered you for your clothing,” said old Aaron Rockharrt, unconscious in his native rudeness that he was frightening and torturing a very nervous invalid.

“But,” urged Rose—­who had grown paler at the picture conjured up—­“providentially I was found by the kind lady who sent or rather brought me here, and even caused me to be put in this room instead of in a ward.  Sister Susannah explained this to me as soon as I was able to make inquiries.”