10
TAKEN AT THE FLOOD.
1-AIiT II.
T T is to be hoped that there is troth in the hypothe
I sis that a worthy end justifies questionable means,
elso the myriads of small deceits and fabrications of
which Allan Kirke was guilty during those days of
his patient's convalescence will tell against him with
old Kt. Peter, and lessen his chances of slipping past
that argus-eycd gate-keeper into the portals of Para
dise. " Now, Hannah," lie said to his sister, one morn
ing when the new year was about two weeks old, " I
shall bring her homo with me to-day. Have the south
chamber warm and everything in readiness for her by
11:00 o'clock."
" Don't bo too confident, Allan, she may refuse to
come with you, and insist on going straight to him."
" No, it is all arranged. I talked with her last
night, and convinced her that the excitement of seeing
him before she had fully recovered was liable to bring
on a relapso. 8ho has received the impression that
her removal hero is to be a sort of test of her strength,
and that if sho boars it well she w:ll be allowed to go
to him in a few days. Oh, Hannah, I feel at times
as if 1 were almost as despicable a villain as he, for
deceiving her so. Vet, I honestly believe that, had 1
acted otherwise, sho would not have survived the
blow. How sho will meet and bear the disclosure,
even now, God alono can tell. I never, in all my life,
dreaded anything as I dread the moment when I must
undeceive her. It does not seem possible that I can
ever look into those innocent, confiding eyes and deal
her such a blow. And yet, I suppose it is a thing
that has got to bo done."
Poor Doctor Kirke! He was not a man to shirk a
disagreeablo responsibility simply because it was dis
agreeable, nor to weakly procrastinate where no good
was to bo attained thereby. Yet all that day, and
during the four days following the advent of Leonie
Desmond into his household, ho wandered about the
premises constantly, but aimlessly, liko a miserable
spirit of unrest, dreading the task that lay before
him, wishing it were accomplished and the worst well
over, yet praying in his soul for some Providential
interference by which ho might bo spared the ordeal.
During that timo he avoided his patient as much as
ho could, paying only a brief little morning and ev
ening visit, and growing so nervous and constrained
in her presence, that, could she have Bpared a thought
for him, sho must have seen that he was enduring
mental torture of some kind. But she, loyal and sin
gle hearted, had few thoughts for any but the loved
one whoso features, tlushed with fever and distorted
with pain, haunted her every hour. Her one longing
by day and dream by night was to be with him, to
cool his throbbing temples with her own hands, to
soothe his troubled spirit with the voice he had once
told her was the sweetest voice in all the world to him.
Meantime she grew stronger with every hour that
passed, and pleaded earnestly to be allowed to go to
her husband; and finally, on the morning of the fifth
day of her stay with them, Doctor Kirke, feeling tint
the crisis could no longer be staved off, braced him.
self as best he could for the ordeal, and started to go
to her apartment; but at that moment the door bell
sounded, and an importunate messenger demanded
the doctor's immediate attendance at the bedside of a
patient.
" Go to her, Hannah," he said, as he took his hat
to obey the summons. " Tell her I was just going to
her, and that she may expect me the moment I re
turn," then he went away, all unconscious that fate
was, after all, going to be merciful to him and spare
him the task he so dreaded.
Kind-hearted Hannah went dutifully to bear her
brother's message, taking her sewing along, with the
kindly intention of sitting and chatting a while with
the unfortunate young creature, over whom her heart
yearned in anxious solicitude.
It so chanced if there really be such a thing as
chance in all the universe that the good lady's sew
ing, on this occasion, was a bit of mending on one of
the doctor's coats, and as she sewed and rocked and
talked, she failed to observe that an envelope worked
its way, slowly but surely, out of one of the breast
pockets of the cumbersome garment and slid softly to
the carpeted floor, where it lay, still unnoticed, when
she completed her task and took her departure from
the room, twenty minutes later.
It was probably half an hour afterward that Doc
tor Kirke returned, and with the face of a brave man
advancing on the scathing fire of a battery, went np
stairs and entered the " south chamber," and there,
stretched rigid and lifeless on the floor, he found
Leonie Desmond. Clutched tightly in the cold fin
gers of one hand was the letter that Arthur Desmond
had written him in the hour of his shameful flight,
while near her, on the carpet, lay the letter from Aus
tralia that had proven the lode-stone he could not
resist.
One quick malediction on himself for not having
taken better care of the fatal missives, then all else
was forgotten by Allan Kirke in his earnest, almost
frantic, efforts to restore her to consciousness. But
all in vain; for, though life returned to her, con
sciousness did not for many a weary night anddty
thereafter.