When Lloyd had parted from the Campbells in the square before the house, she had gone directly to the railway station of a suburban line, and, within the hour, was on her way to Medford.  As always happened when an interesting case was to be treated, her mind became gradually filled with it to the exclusion of everything else.  The Campbells, and Bennett’s ready acceptance of a story that put her in so humiliating a light, were forgotten as the train swept her from the heat and dust of the City out into the green reaches of country to the southward.  What had been done upon the case she had no means of telling.  She only knew that the case was of unusual virulence and well advanced.  It had killed one nurse already and seriously endangered the life of another, but so far from reflecting on the danger to herself, Lloyd felt a certain exhilaration in the thought that she was expected to succeed where others had succumbed.  Another battle with the Enemy was at hand, the Enemy who, though conquered on a hundred fields, must inevitably triumph in the end.  Once again this Enemy had stooped and caught a human being in his cold grip.  Once again Life and Death were at grapples, and Death was strong, and from out the struggle a cry had come—­had come to her—­a cry for help.

All the exuberance of battle grew big within her breast.  She was impatient to be there—­there at hand—­to face the Enemy again across the sick-bed, where she had so often faced and outfought him before; and, matching her force against his force, her obstinacy against his strength—­the strength that would pull the life from her grasp—­her sleepless vigilance against his stealth, her intelligence against his cunning, her courage against his terrors, her resistance against his attack, her skill against his strategy, her science against his world-old, worldwide experience, win the fight, save the life, hold firm against his slow, resistless pull and triumph again, if it was only for the day.

Succeed she would and must.  Her inborn obstinacy, her sturdy refusal to yield her ground, whatever it should be, her stubborn power of resistance, her tenacity of her chosen course, came to her aid as she drew swiftly near to the spot whereon the battle would be fought.  Mentally she braced herself, holding back with all her fine, hard-tempered, native strength.  No, she would not yield the life to the Enemy; no, she would not give up; no, she would not recede.  Let the Enemy do his worst—­she was strong against his efforts.

At Medford, which she reached toward four in the afternoon, after an hour’s ride from the City, she found a conveyance waiting for her, and was driven rapidly through streets bordered with villas and closely shaven lawns to a fair-sized country seat on the outskirts of the town.  The housekeeper met her at the door with the information that the doctor was, at the moment, in the sick-room, and had left orders that the nurse should be brought to him the moment she arrived.  The housekeeper showed Lloyd the way to the second landing, knocking upon the half-open door at the end of the hall, and ushering her in without waiting for an answer.