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WHAT BEFELL DINAH.
Dinah Morse and her niece Janet were faring sumptuously in Lord Desborough's house, hard by St.Paul's Churchyard.

His young wife lay sick of a grievous fever, and he was well nigh distracted by the fear of losing her.
Nothing was too good for her, or for the gentle-faced, soft-voiced nurses who had come to tend her in her hour of need.

The best of everything was at their disposal; and it was no great source of regret to them that several of the hired servants had fled before their arrival, a whisper having gone through the house that her ladyship had taken the plague.
Dinah and Janet had seen too much of the plague to be deceived by a few trifling similarities in some of the symptoms.

They were able to assure the distracted husband that it was not the dreaded distemper, and then they settled to the task of nursing like those habituated to it; and so different were they in their ways from the women he had seen before in the office of sick nurse, many of whom were creatures of no good reputation, and of evil habits and life, that his mind was almost relieved of its fears and anxiety, and he began to entertain joyful hopes of the recovery of his spouse.
Upon the Sunday morning which had passed so strangely and eventfully for those in the east of the city, there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity of patient or of nurses.