Aaron took two strides, clapped his hands on his son-in-law's shoulders. 'My boy, do you not realize that your wife is in grave danger? I have heard of these convulsions which sometimes accompany childbirth. They almost invariably prove——' His voice thickened. He compressed his lips, strode rapidly to the window. With his back to the room he finished the sentence with a coldness and lack of emotion that were more terrifying to Joseph than tears would have been. 'You will lose both your wife and your unborn child unless there is a miracle.'

The miracle was wrought, and wrought by Aaron.

From the four other physicians in the city he selected the only one who seemed to his keen insight to have sufficient knowledge or intelligence to be of help to Theodosia: Doctor Ramsay.

The doctor was installed in the house and spurred to extraordinary effort by Aaron's unceasing vigilance. Aaron supervised everything that was done for Theo, held the basin for the blood-letting, washed and tended her, slept on a chair in her room, alert for her feeblest cry. All through a blur of gray days and nights when she was sometimes wandering and sometimes in stupor.

Doctor Ramsay thought it to be some failure of the renal function.

'Then she must have water,' cried Aaron, 'to dilute the poisons. But city water is often impure. I long ago noted that tea-drinkers have fewer maladies. It is a more wholesome fluid.'

So he forced Theo to drink frequent draughts of weak tea, and gradually the swelling in her limbs subsided, her head grew clearer, her strength came back a little, and then one afternoon toward dusk labor commenced.

Through a suffocating red mist of new pain she heard noises of muted confusion through the house, servants running, shouted orders, the constant jangle of bells. There were faces, many faces. Dimly she recognized her mother-in-law and Maria peering nervously, murmuring.

They must expect me to die if they have come back from Sullivan's Island, she thought impersonally. Death no longer seemed important.

In a pause between pains she heard a dialogue at the door between Maria and Aaron.

'Colonel Burr, I understand that Theodosia is in danger, but I must request you to leave her room. Your presence here is most unseemly at such a time. My father and Mrs. Alston are extremely distressed; they asked me to tell you.'

Theo drew herself up—'No, Father! Don't leave me—please'. Her voice was high and thin.

'I have no intention of leaving you, my dear child. Lady Nisbett, I deplore any wound that I may give to your sensibilities, but I shall do what I think best for my daughter.'

'It is her husband who should be with her if any man must be,' returned Maria angrily.