Mr. Campbell drew in his breath and held it for a moment, looking out of the window.

Very attentive, Lloyd merely nodded her head, murmuring: 

“I understand.”

When Dr. Street had gone Lloyd immediately set to work.  The operation was to take place at noon the following day, and she foresaw there would be no sleep for her that night.  Street had left everything to her, even to the sterilising of his instruments.  Until daylight the following morning Lloyd came and went about the house with an untiring energy, yet with the silence of a swiftly moving shadow, getting together the things needed for the operation—­strychnia tablets, absorbent cotton, the rubber tubing for the tourniquet, bandages, salt, and the like—­and preparing the little chamber adjoining the sick-room as an operating-room.

The little patient herself, Hattie, hardly into her teens, remembered Lloyd at once.  Before she went to sleep Lloyd contrived to spend an hour in the sick-room with her, told her as much as was necessary of what was contemplated, and, by her cheery talk, her gentleness and sympathy, inspired the little girl with a certain sense of confidence and trust in her.

“But—­but—­but just how bad will it hurt, Miss Searight?” inquired Hattie, looking at her, wide-eyed and serious.

“Dear, it won’t hurt you at all; just two or three breaths of the ether and you will be sound asleep.  When you wake up it will be all over and you will be well.”

Lloyd made the ether cone from a stiff towel, and set it on Hattie’s dressing-table.  Last of all and just before the operation the gauze sponges occupied her attention.  The daytime brought her no rest.  Hattie was not to have any breakfast, but toward the middle of the forenoon Lloyd gave her a stimulating enema of whiskey and water, following it about an hour later by a hundredth grain of atropia.  She braided the little girl’s hair in two long plaits so that her head would rest squarely and flatly upon the pillow.  Hattie herself was now ready for the surgeon.

Now there was nothing more to be done.  Lloyd could but wait.  She took her place at the bedside and tried to talk as lightly as was possible to her patient.  But now there was a pause in the round of action.  Her mind no longer keenly intent upon the immediate necessities of the moment, began to hark back again to the one great haunting fear that for so long had overshadowed it.  Even while she exerted herself to be cheerful and watched for the smiles on Hattie’s face her hands twisted tight and tighter under the folds of her blouse, and some second self within her seemed to say: 

“Suppose, suppose it should come, this thing I dread but dare not name, what then, what then?  Should I not expect it?  Is it not almost a certainty?  Have I not been merely deceiving myself with the forlornest hopes?  Is it not the most reasonable course to expect the worst?  Do not all indications point that way?  Has not my whole life been shaped to this end?  Was not this calamity, this mighty sorrow, prepared for me even before I was born?  And one can do nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, but wait and hope and fear, and eat out one’s heart with longing.”