“And handle him gently whatever you do,” said Dard.  “I know what it is to be wounded.”

These four carried the lifeless burden very slowly and gently across the Pleasaunce to the house, then with more difficulty and caution up the stairs.

All the while the sisters’ hands griped one another tight beneath the lifeless burden, and spoke to one another.  And Josephine’s arm upheld tenderly but not weakly the hero she had struck down.  She avoided Rose’s eye, her mother’s, and even the doctor’s:  one gasping sob escaped her as she walked with head half averted, and vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and her victim on her sustaining arm.

The doctor selected the tapestried chamber for him as being most airy.  Then he ordered the women out, and with Dard’s help undressed the still insensible patient.

Josephine sat down on the stairs in gloomy silence, her eyes on the ground, like one waiting for her deathblow.

Rose, sick at heart, sat silent too at some distance.  At last she said faintly, “Have we done well?”

“I don’t know,” said Josephine doggedly.  Her eyes never left the ground.

“We could not let him die for want of care.”

“He will not thank us.  Better for him to die than live.  Better for me.”

At this instant Dard came running down.  “Good news, mesdemoiselles, good news! the wound runs all along; it is not deep, like mine was.  He has opened his eyes and shut them again.  The dear good doctor stopped the blood in a twinkle.  The doctor says he’ll be bound to save him.  I must run and tell Jacintha.  She is taking on in the kitchen.”

Josephine, who had risen eagerly from her despairing posture, clasped her hands together, then lifted up her voice and wept.  “He will live! he will live!”

When she had wept a long while, she said to Rose, “Come, sister, help your poor Josephine.”

“Yes, love, what shall we do?”

“My duty,” faltered Josephine.  “An hour ago it seemed so sweet,” and she fell to weeping patiently again.  They went to Josephine’s room.  She crept slowly to a wardrobe, and took out a gray silk dress.

“Oh, never mind for to-day,” cried Rose.

“Help me, Rose.  It is for myself as well; to remind me every moment I am Madame Raynal.”

They put the gray gown on her, both weeping patiently.  It will be known at the last day, all that honest women have suffered weeping silently in this noisy world.

Camille soon recovered his senses and a portion of his strength:  then the irritation of his wound brought on fever.  This in turn retired before the doctor’s remedies and a sound constitution, but it left behind it a great weakness and general prostration.  And in this state the fate of the body depends greatly on the mind.

The baroness and the doctor went constantly to see him, and soothe him:  he smiled and thanked them, but his eager eyes watched the door for one who came not.