"We did not think so once." Miss Barrington smiled curiously.

"Are you very much astonished, Maud?
Still, there is nothing you can do for me, and we shall want you to-morrow." Realizing that there was no need for her, the girl went out, and when the door closed behind her the little white-haired lady bent down and gazed at her patient long and steadily.

Then she shook her head, and moved back to the seat she had risen from with perplexity in her face.
In the meanwhile, Maud Barrington sat by the open window in her room staring out into the night.

There was a whispering in the birch bluff, and the murmuring of leagues of grasses rose from the prairie that stretched away beyond it.

Still, though the wind fanned her throbbing forehead with a pleasant coolness, the nocturnal harmonies awoke no response in her.