entering, he wore a blue blouse and looked like a porter from the railway. Did he want anything? she asked. The man hesitated, drew a letter from his pocket, and pointing to the direction, enquired if it was for her. Nesta assented, and took the letter from him. It was a telegram. The blue pencil writing swam before her eyes and she could scarcely decipher it. A vague sense of evil was contained in those few words with their wellknown signature. Come to me, Nesta,' was all the telegram contained. In half an hour she was in the train, as it puffed away on the line towards England.

251

CHAPTER XVI.

NIMMERMEHR.

'Alone and yet not lonely; brave and blest;
Brave but not hard, and blest but no more glad.'

A WEARY anxious journey, that seemed as if it would never end. Long halts at small stations, and holiday people getting in and out, and baskets of ripe autumn fruits held up to carriage windows-everything like itself, only not Nesta. What was the evil she was going to meet, that had taken a tangible form within the last few hours, and that even still, unknown as it was, had robbed the present of every tiny bit of brightness? She asked herself the question over and over again, suggested a thousand things that might or might not be, and tried to refute every fear as it arose.

It was late at night when she reached the station at which she was to halt; there was no luggage to be looked after, nothing to do

but to engage a drosky, and rattle along the stone-paved streets. Even then the drive seemed interminable. At every street she hoped it was the last, but the driver cracked his whip and turned corner after corner, and the carriage shook and jolted over the stones with merciless noise. At last it drew up at the broad entrance of the hotel. Waiters were on the steps ready to open the carriage door, and assist the new arrival, and the host with obsequious attention stood at the folding doors to receive orders. It was a disappointment this time, it was a lady alone, without luggage.

6

Is Mr. Stanley here? Shew me to his room,' she said, advancing to the flight of stairs. The waiter ran up before her, and passed door after door along a gallery which seemed unending. Nesta dared not ask the news she longed to hear, and the man was slow in proffering it. He slackened his step, passed two doors almost on tip-toe, and then pointing to the third, said in a voice so low that had the tenor of his words been different

they would have escaped Nesta's ear: 'Er lebt noch.'

They were received with no surprise, no symptom of alarm; undefined as her fears had been, they were a relief.

It was a large room with two windows looking out upon the noisy street, where the carriages were still rattling along, in spite of the lateness of the hour. Down below there was busy active life, what was there here? Nesta shuddered as she entered. A feeble lamp was burning in one corner of the room, with a screen before it, so that it almost tended to reveal the darkness of the apartment, rather than to relieve it. Coming too from the brilliant gas lamps of the gallery, the transition blinded her completely.

A small dark figure advanced to meet her, placing her finger to her lips as if in caution. 'Is it Nesta ?' said a low but familiar voice.

'I didn't expect you so soon. I thought it impossible.'

She went up to the bedside. It was a small German bed standing against the wall,

and filling but little space in the room, the greater part of which was left bare of furniture. Some terrible change had come over the occupant of it. Nesta had evidently arrived only in time for the last phase of that change. What had been the preceding ones? When had he been taken ill?

The small figure in black hovered about, doing everything at the right time, but not speaking a word. Nesta made a few enquiries, but she put her finger to her lips, in the same manner as before, as if to enjoin silence.

'You are tired,' said Frank. Nesta only pressed his hand a little harder. It was

burning.

When the doctor came, he told her the state of things.

He had been summoned that day to a traveller just arrived, and he had found him as ill as he could be. It was a sudden attack of heart disease. He did not say there was no hope, but Nesta read it in his countenance. And Dick, where was he?