"I fear so, but we will do all we can to prevent it." Elise watched her
go on towards the Manor in the declining sunlight, then turned heavily to
her work again.

There came to her ears the sound of a dog-churn in the yard outside, and
the dull roll and beat seemed to keep time to the aching pulses in her
head, in all her body. One thought kept going through her brain: there
was, as she had felt, trouble coming for Valmond. She had the
conviction, too, that it was very near. Her one definite idea was, that
she should be able to go to him when that trouble came; that she should
not fail him at his great need. Yet these pains in her body, this
alternate exaltation and depression, this pitiful weakness! She must
conquer it. She remembered the hours spent at his bedside; the moments
when he was all hers--by virtue of his danger and her own unwavering care
of him. She recalled the dark moment when Death, intrusive, imminent,
lurked at the tent door, and in its shadow she emptied out her soul in
that one kiss of fealty and farewell.

That kiss--there came to her again, suddenly, Madame Degardy's cry of
warning: "Don't get his breath--it's death, idiot!"

That was it: the black fever was in her veins! That one kiss had sealed
her own doom. She knew it now.

He had given her life by giving her love. Well, he should give her death
too--her lord of fife and death. She was of the chosen few who could
drink the cup of light and the cup of darkness with equally regnant soul.

But it might lay her low in the very hour of Valmond's trouble. She must
conquer it--how? To whom could she turn for succour? There was but