standstill, whereupon her grasp relaxed and she fell to the ground in a
dead faint.

She had done a marvellous thing--almost incredible. I have had horses
bolt with me and have seen horses bolt with others many times; and
every person who has seen such a thing and who knows a horse--its power
and the blind mad terror it is seized with on occasions--will agree
with me that it is only at the risk of his life that even a strong and
agile man can attempt to stop a bolting horse. We all said that she had
saved her sister's life and were lost in admiration of her deed, but
presently it seemed that she would pay for it with her own life. She
recovered from the faint, but from that day began a decline, until in
about three months' time she appeared to me more like a ghost than a
being of flesh and blood. She had not strength to cross the rooms--all
her strength and life were dying out of her because of that one
unnatural, almost supernatural, act. She passed the days lying on a
couch, speaking, when obliged to speak, in a whisper, her eyes sunk,
her face white even to the lips, seeming the whiter for the mass of
loose raven-black hair in which it was set. There were few doctors,
English and native, who were not first and last called into
consultation over the case, and still no benefit, no return to life,
but ever the slow drifting towards the end. And at the last
consultation of all this happened. When it was over and the doctors
were asked into a room where refreshments were placed for them, the
father of the girl spoke aside to a young doctor, a stranger to him,
and begged him to tell him truly if there was no hope. The other
replied that he should not lose all hope if--then he paused, and when
he spoke again it was to say, "I am, you see, a very young man, a
beginner in the profession, with little experience, and hardly know why
I am called here to consult with these older and wiser men; and