“Then I am sure the pleasure has been mutual, Mr. Palmer, for I have enjoyed myself exceedingly,” Mona replied, as she lifted her flushed and smiling face to him.

“You are very kind to give me that assurance,” he returned, “and you embolden me to crave another favor.  May I have your permission to call upon you occasionally?”

“I am only very happy to grant it; pray consider yourself welcome at any time,” Mona answered, cordially, but dropping her eyes beneath his earnest look.

“Thank you; I shall gladly avail myself of your kindness,” the young man gratefully responded; and then, with a lingering clasp of the hand, he bade her good-night and ran lightly down the steps.

With a rapidly beating heart and throbbing pulses, Mona softly let herself in with a latch-key, turned out the hall gas, which had been left burning dimly for her, and started to mount the stairs, when she espied a gleam of light shining beneath the library door.

“Why!  Uncle Walter has not gone to bed yet!  Can it be that he is sitting up for me?” she murmured.  “I will go and tell him that I have come in, and get my good-night kiss.”

She turned back and went quietly down the hall, and tapped lightly at the door.  Receiving no response, she opened it, and passed into the room.

The gas was burning brightly, and Mr. Dinsmore was sitting before his desk, but reclining in his chair, his head thrown back against the soft, bright head-rest, the work of Mona’s skillful fingers.

“He has fallen asleep,” said the fair girl, as she went to his side and laid her hand gently upon his shoulder.

“Uncle Walter,” she called, “why did you sit up for me?  Wake up now and go to bed, or you will be having one of your dreadful headaches to-morrow.”

But the man did not make or show any signs of having heard her.

He was breathing heavily, and Mona now noticed that his face was unnaturally flushed, and that the veins upon his temples were knotted and swollen.

A startled look swept over her face, and she grew white with a sudden fear.

“Uncle Walter!” she cried out, sharply, and trying to arouse him; “speak to me!  Oh! there is something dreadful the matter with him; he is ill—­he is unconscious!”

With a wild cry and sob of fear and anguish, she turned and sped with flying feet from the room.

A moment later she was knocking vigorously at the door of the serving-man’s room, begging him to “get up at once and go for Doctor Hammond, for Mr. Dinsmore was very ill.”

Having aroused James, she called the other servants, and then flew back to her idolized uncle.

There was no change in him; he sat and breathed just the same.  Instinctively feeling that something ought to be done immediately for his relief, with trembling fingers she loosened his neck-tie, unbuttoned his collar, then drenching her handkerchief with water from an ice pitcher, she began to bathe his flushed and knotted forehead.