bouquet, and asked after Milly. When I had answered him he loitered
by me for a little in a curious way, as if he wanted to say
something else; but I was too full of my own thoughts and cares to
pay much attention to him.

The next day, and the next, brought no change in my darling, and I
was growing every hour more anxious. I could see that Mr. Hale was
puzzled and uneasy, though he said he saw no reason for telegraphing
to Manchester, yet awhile. He was very attentive, and was reputed to
be very clever; and I knew that he was really attached to Milly,
whom he had attended from her infancy.

Angus Egerton saw me twice every day; and these brief interviews had
now become very painful to me. I found it so difficult to cheer him
with hopeful words, when my own heart was hourly growing heavier,
and the fears that had been vague and shadowy were gathering
strength and shape. I was very tired, but I held out resolutely; and
I had never once slept for so much as a quarter of an hour upon my
watch, until the second night after that meeting with Mrs. Darrell
at the door of the dressing-room.

That night I was seized with an unconquerable sleepiness, about an
hour after I had dismissed Susan Dodd. The room was very quiet, not
a sound except the ticking of the pretty little clock upon the
mantelpiece. Milly was fast asleep, and I was sitting on a low chair
by the fire trying to read, when my drowsiness overcame me, my heavy
eyelids fell, and I went off into a feverish kind of slumber, in
which I was troubled with an uneasy consciousness that I ought to be
awake.