not worship!"

Helen turned and glided back into the house, and neither knew she
had been there.






CHAPTER XVII.

DELIVERANCE.





All that could be done for Leopold by tenderest sisterly care under
the supervision of Mr. Faber, who believed in medicine less than in
good nursing, was well supplemented by the brotherly ministrations
of Wingfold, who gave all the time he could honestly spare from his
ordinary work to soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it
became clearer every week that nothing would avail to entice the
torn roots of his being to clasp again the soil of the world: he was
withering away out of it. Ere long symptoms appeared which no one
could well mistake, and Lingard himself knew that he was dying.
Wingfold had dreaded that his discovery of the fact might reveal
that he had imagined some atonement in the public confession he
desired to make, and that, when he found it denied him, he would