of an old friend and for my reputation, to make my operation perfectly successful. Cornel here will carry out my instructions to the letter. She will help me too in the operation.”
“But an operation is not fit – not the place for a young girl.”
“Why not?” said Cornel, smiling.
“It is unsexing you, my child.”
“Unsexing me, when I come to help to calm your pain, to nurse you back to health and strength! A woman never unsexes herself in proving a help to those who suffer. Besides, I have often helped my brother before.”
Meanwhile the surgeon had busied himself at a table upon which he had placed a mahogany case. He had had his back to them, but now turned and advanced to the bed, with a little silver implement in his hand.
“Now, my dear sir, a little manly fortitude and patience, and you may believe me when I tell you that there is nothing to fear.”
“Who is afraid?” said the old man sharply. “But what’s that?”
“A little apparatus for injecting an anaesthetic.”
“I said I wouldn’t have anything of the kind,” cried the patient angrily. “I can and will bear it.”
“But I cannot and will not,” said the surgeon, smiling. “You could not help wincing and showing your suffering. That would trouble, perhaps unnerve me, and I could not work so well.”
“What are you going to do? – give me chloroform?”
“No; I am going to inject a fluid that will dull the sensitive nerves of the part, and place you in such a condition that you will lose all sense of suffering.”
“And if I don’t come to?”
“You will not for some time. Now, old friend, show me your confidence. Are you ready?”
There was a long, deep-drawn breath, a look at the young girl’s patient, trust-giving face and then Ezekiel Masters, one of the wealthiest men in Boston, said calmly —
“Yes.”
A few minutes later he was lying perfectly insensible, and breathing as gently as an infant. “Can you repeat that from time to time, as I tell you?” said the surgeon.
“Yes, dear.”
“Without flinching?”
“Yes. It is to save him. I shall not shrink.”
“Then I depend upon you.”
Busy minutes followed, with the patient lying perfectly unconscious.
“How long could he be kept like this, Michael?” whispered Cornel, whose face looked very white.
“As long as you wished – comparatively. Don’t talk; you hinder me.”
“As long as I liked,” thought Cornel, with her eyes dilating as she gazed at the patient, with the little syringe in her hand, and the stoppered bottle, from which the fluid was taken, close by – “as long as I liked, and he as if quite dead. What an awful power to hold within one’s grasp!”
Chapter Two.
The Certain Person
“Hah!”
A long-drawn sigh of content, which made Cornelia Thorpe emerge from her chair behind the bed-curtains, and bend over to lay her soft white hand upon the patient’s forehead, but only for it to be taken and held to his lips.
“Well, angel?” he said quietly.
“Your head is quite cool; there is no fever. Have you had a good night’s rest?”
“Good, my child? It has been heavenly. I seemed to sink at once into a delicious dreamless sleep, such as I have not known for a year, and I feel as if I had not stirred all night.”
“You have not.”
“Then you have watched by me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Hah!” There was a pause. Then: “You must have given me a strong dose?”
“No,” said Cornel, smiling. “Your sleep was quite natural. Why should it not be? Michael says the cause of all your suffering is completely removed, and that he has been successful beyond his hopes.”
The old man lay holding his nurse’s hand, and gazing at her fair, innocent face intently for some minutes before breaking the silence again.
“When was it?” he said at last.
“A week to-day, and in another month you may be up again.”
“Hah! And they say there are no miracles now, and no angels upon earth,” said the patient, half to himself. Then more loudly, “Cornel, my child, I think I must turn over a new leaf.”
“Don’t,” she said, smiling. “I like the old page. You have always been my fathers dear friend – always good and kind.”
“I? Bah! A regular money-scraping, harsh tyrant. A regular miser.”
“Nonsense, Mr Masters.”
“Then I’ll prove it. I won’t pay Michael his fees, nor you your wages for nursing me – not till I’m dead. Well, have I said something funny? Why do you laugh?”
“I smiled because I felt pleased.”
“Because I’m better?”
“Yes; and because you are not going to insult Michael, nor your nurse, by offering us – ”
“Dollars? Humph! There, let’s talk about something else. Does Michael still hold to that insane notion of going to Europe?”
“Oh yes; we should have been there now, if it had not been for your illness.”
“Then he gave it up for a time, because I wanted him to attend me?”
Cornel bowed her head.
“Humph! Sort of madness to want to go at all. Isn’t America big enough for him?”
“Of course,” said Cornel, laughing gently; and now the air of the nurse appeared to have dropped away, to give place to the bright happy look of a girl of twenty. “Surely it is not madness to want to increase his knowledge by a little study at the English and French hospitals. Besides, it was our father’s wish.”
“Yes; Jack was very mad about the English doctors, when there was not one who could touch him. I say, though: Michael is going to be as clever.”
“I hope so,” said Cornel, with animation. “He studies very hard.”
“Yes, he’s a clever one, girl; and Jack Thorpe would have been very proud of him if he had lived. But, I say – ”
Cornel looked inquiringly in the keen eyes which searched her face.
“You
