He's better." "Who's that whispering ?" murmured the patient, angrily, though half asleep.
Mewks went in, and answered: "Only me and Jemima, sir." "Where's Miss Marston ?" "She's not come yet, sir." "I want to go to sleep again.

You must wake me the moment she comes." "Yes, sir." Mewks went back to Sepia.
"His voice is much altered," she said.
"He most always speaks like that now, miss, when he wakes--very different from I used to know him! He'd always swear bad when he woke; but Miss Marston do seem t' 'ave got a good deal of that out of him.
Anyhow, this last two days he's scarce swore enough to make it feel home-like." "It's death has got it out of him," said Sepia.

"I don't think he can last the night through.

Fetch me at once if--And don't let that Marston into the room again, whatever you do." She spoke with the utmost emphasis, plainly clinching instructions previously given, then went slowly up the stair to her own room.

Surely he would die to-night, and she would not be led into temptation! She would then have but to get a hold of the paper! What a hateful and unjust thing it was that her life should be in the power of that man--a miserable creature, himself hanging between life and death!--that such as he should be able to determine her fate, and say whether she was to be comfortable or miserable all the rest of a life that was to outlast his so many years! It was absurd to talk of a Providence! She must be her own providence! She stole again down the stair.