Mary was carried to her own room, where she came to herself without agitation or apparent disturbance, asking only “Where am I?” when she recovered her consciousness as she looked vaguely round, and requiring to have it explained to her that she was at the Park and not at her own house, which for the moment seemed the only thing that perplexed her. Agnes, in high excitement, hoping and fearing she knew not what, but something at least which should change and reconstitute life, watched her with an anxiety scarcely more strong than the disappointment with which she became aware that nothing was going to happen. Towards night Mary informed her sister that she had been dreaming a very strange dream, something about drinking toasts, “and there was one to my dear old lord. I think it must have been Duke’s birthday party that was in my head,” she said. Agnes did not venture to inquire further, or to suggest that Duke’s party was a reality and not a dream; but trembling with anxiety, with eagerness, with deep disappointment, had to compel herself to silence and allow her sister to rest. There is a period at which we all arrive in our deepest troubles, when we shrink from effort, when even to try to set matters right becomes too much, and to remain quiet always, to ignore one’s misery, seems the best. Agnes had come to this point. Even her prayers made her heart sick. She had waited so long and nothing had come—perhaps to leave off, to try no more, to be still was after all the best.
This explains how it was that she said nothing to Lady Frogmore—not a word concerning the scene at the dinner, or the generous speech of Duke, or that improvised address of Mar. Some emotion must have come into Mary’s mind, or she would not have fainted. But what was it? And how had the sight of her boy, and the hearing of him, and all that had been said about his father, affected her spirit? She gave no clue to this mystery. She was very quiet and feeble all the evening; would not go down again, and sent a message that she would see no one that night, but hoped to be quite well and strong for to-morrow. She sent her love to Duke, but mentioned no other name. Why her love to Duke? Was it because of what he had said? Was it for that generous setting forth of the other claims? Agnes shook her head sadly as she pondered in herself this mysterious question. But Mary threw no light upon it. She was more quiet even than usual, making little remark after that strange speech about her dream; and she said not a word of the incident of the day—the one point which everybody was discussing. Was she pondering it silently, feeling more than she said? Was her mind blank altogether to any light on that question? or was the light beginning to force itself upon her, to be painful and importunate? These mysteries perplexed and troubled Agnes beyond measure; but she could not answer them. When she went downstairs into the house all full and overflowing with youthful life, the contrast with the calm to which she was accustomed, the extreme quiet—like a cloister—of the atmosphere which surrounded Mary was wonderful. They were all discussing what had happened, in every way, from every point of view. The dinner was over, the farmers driving away in their dogcarts and shandry-dans—a few gentlemen, neighbors, the vicar of the parish, Mr. Blotting, the man of business, and one or two others were waiting for the late and informal meal which was the end of the day. John Parke stood between his son and his nephew in the great drawing-room where they were all assembled, standing against the window and the clear evening sky. He had a hand on the shoulder of each, and his air was that of a man satisfied with his boys, making no difference between them, as if both were his own. Mar, the long boy, tallest of all the party, looked almost grotesque in his thinness and precocious height against the light. In the corner of the room, where her face was half visible in the twilight, not lost like the others against the background of light, Letitia was talking to the lawyer. She was talking quickly, her countenance agitated with feelings very unlike those which united her husband and the boys. “I disapprove of it altogether,” she said, “it was a great mistake. Mar never ought to have been brought forward at his age, and in his state of health. I am very angry with Duke. He knows how particular I have been to keep the boy out of everything that is agitating and exciting, and now to spring this upon us in a moment, upsetting every body. Letty, you are always in the plot with those boys. I am sure you knew.”
“I knew that Duke meant to say something about Mar, if that is what you mean, mamma.”
“And you took good care not to tell me,” said her mother. Letitia’s eyes, though they were dull by nature, gave forth a sort of green light. “A boy of his age,” she said, “to be brought forward in this way, and got up to make such a ridiculous speech and talk such childish nonsense. At all events Duke should have had more sense. Everybody knows how careful I have been about Mar, to keep him out of all excitement. He is not fit for it. If he had not been kept in cotton wool all his life I don’t believe he would have been alive now.”
“I think you are too anxious, my dear lady,” said Mr. Blotting, “it will do the boy no harm. He is not a child. He’ll have to take his part in life sooner or later. Perhaps you would find it wiser to let him accustom himself a little——”
“His part in life at sixteen!” said Letitia. “What is that? The schoolroom and his lessons——”
“I should have said a public school, if you and John had listened to me.”
“He is not fit for a public school any more than he is for the affairs of life,” cried Letitia. “Look at him! He’s like a skeleton already. That boy never could hold his own at school. Oh yes, Duke got on very well, and so did Jack and Reggie. They are not at all delicate, but Mar—so long as I have charge of him he shall be taken every care of,” Mrs. Parke said with decision. “There must be no more of this. I shall not sleep a wink all night in the fear that something may happen to him—either brain, and that’s most trying you know on one side of the house, Mr. Blotting—or heart.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Lady Frogmore now? I hear she has never gone back but maintained the improvement. I don’t think it is like a family tendency that sort of thing. Many ladies, they tell me——”
“Oh, Mr. Blotting, they tell you gentlemen a number of foolish things where women are concerned. I have had six children, and did I ever go off my head on any occasion? No. Poor Mary must have had a tendency—and when I think of that, and what a dreadful thing it would be if anything should happen to the boy under my roof.”
“You are very much afraid of anything happening to my nephew Frogmore, Letitia.”
“There it is,” said Letitia. “I knew how it would be—Frogmore!—To give him a false idea of his position when he is not old enough to understand. Yes, Agnes Hill; I am very much afraid. I know what all of you would say if anything happened to the boy while he was with me. You would put your heads together, and you would whisper how much it was to my interest. Oh, I know very well all the attacks that would be made upon us. You would not say anything clear out, but you would insinuate the most horrible things. You know very well yourself that that is what you would do.”
Miss Hill was not insensible to her own imperfections. She did not contradict Letitia. She even understood the anxiety which was not dictated by love or any concern for Mar, which was simply self-regard—a terror for blame. It was not unnatural, and she did not believe that Mrs. Parke would do anything to harm the boy. She said no more. She did not offer to take the responsibility upon herself, and how could she criticize the woman who had it laid upon her, whether she would or no?
“The boy has clearly something in him,” said Mr. Blotting; “he’s not stupid. What he said was very well said, and so evidently genuine and unprepared. It’s a pity he is not more forward in his education. I don’t blame you, Mrs. Parke, nor your husband. I understand your feeling. Still, if you could have made up your mind to the risk—— The last man, Brownlow, don’t you know, the tutor, thought——”
“The last man was an impertinent cad,” said Letitia. “Oh, yes, I pick up the boys’ words as everybody does. He was always unpleasant. His principle was to contradict me whatever was settled on. I wish you would not quote a man like that to me. We have done the best we could for the boy, John and I—— I wish his mother would take him; that would be the natural arrangement. I assure you we would jump at anything that would free us from the responsibility. Well, what is it now?”
“Mother; Mar is to sit up for supper. He couldn’t be sent upstairs at this hour, a day like this?”
“Papa says he may,” said Letty coming forward a step, dragging her father to the front with her arm through his arm.
“I don’t say anything, Letitia,” said John alarmed, “except with your approval. But I think you may relax your care a little for once, for Duke’s sake. I don’t think it will do the boy any harm.”
Letitia threw up her arms with a gesture of despair. “You must have it your own way of course,” she said. “I can’t oppose you; and if Mar is laid up to-morrow it will be his own fault, or it will be your fault, and much good that will do him. You can put him in the way of having a headache, but you can’t bear it for him; but I wash my hands of it,” Mrs. Parke said.
The supper was very gay. The few guests were all old friends. The youngest members of the family were all there, and the license of a family domestic festival prevailed. The one spectator who did not unbend was Agnes, whose heart was so full of anxieties that her countenance could not lose their trace. She sat by John’s side, however, which was the most favorable place, and listened to all the chatter of the children, who had perfect confidence in their father, and felt in spite of herself a confidence in the eventual fate of Mar which she had never felt before. John Parke was but a stupid man, and he had not been without a feeling that to sweep the little interloper out of his way, if it could be done, was desirable; but that had long died away, and John had come to regard Mar as one of his family, with a little special pity for the delicacy upon which his wife dwelt so much, acquiescing in all her measures of special care for the weakly boy with a more generous and kind motive than hers. John was heartily pleased that Mar had distinguished himself, that it was he almost more than Duke who was the hero of the day. He was pleased with his son’s generosity, and with his nephew’s affection, and with the clamor and pleasure of all the young ones ranged near him, leaving the strangers to be entertained by the mother. Tiny was at her father’s elbow, the youngest of all, the privileged member of the party, at whose sallies everybody laughed, though perhaps they were not very witty. By one of those curious confusions of nature which occur in families, Tiny, who was like her mother—not a Parke at all, as good-natured friends said—had also, in certain aspects of her lively little countenance, a resemblance to Mar, who was a Parke all over except in the point of height. And it had been very agreeable to Mar to find in the baby of his aunt’s nursery a something more feeble, more easily tired, less capable of fatigue than even he himself was considered to be; from which circumstance, and from the fact that the little one had become the playmate of the delicate boy when all the other boys had gone to school, there was a special tie between them. Mar himself was a totally different being here from the mild and sad boy whom Agnes had found alone in the schoolroom accepting his solitary fate with precocious philosophy. Very different dreams were now before his eyes. He had forgotten how likely it was that “something should happen.” The gravest impressions disappear like a passing breath from the consciousness of sixteen. Mar had made a great step in advance by his first appearance in public. He felt himself almost a man with fortune before him. He no longer looked on Reggie and Jack with the uneasy sense of superiority, yet inferiority, which is so bitter at all ages. The sense that he was more advanced than they, of a different kind of being in his boyish premature thoughtfulness, but oh so far behind the public school-boy in everything that is most prized at that age, passed from his mind in the happier consciousness of personal importance, of being in himself something that Reggie and Jack could never be. This made the boy happier with them all, with the two boys who were least his friends and did not conceal their contempt of him, as well as with the others who patronized and pitied Mar. Neither of these conditions, which were both humiliating, were visible this evening. Duke did not patronize nor Reggie contradict. They were all, to say the truth, a good deal startled, even those who had brought that happy accident about, by the unexpected response of Mar to the call of circumstances. There is no English boy or man who does not feel the advantage of being able to make a speech. And though Mar might be a milksop, unfit for football, and unable to be out in all weathers, yet it was a tremendous revolution to find that he could stand up before a crowd and not be afraid to speak. Even Duke had learned off by heart a speech which had been prepared for him beforehand, the boys knew. But Mar said it straight off out of his head.
All this change of feeling Agnes perceived with an absorbed attention which in no way changed the grimness of her aspect as she sat at table. She listened to all the young clamor about her with a yielding heart but an unyielding face. “You are not used to a noisy party, and I am afraid they worry you,” said John Parke, whose attention was suddenly called from his own placid enjoyment of his children’s gaiety which he pretended to hush by times with a raised finger and a “Don’t let your mother hear you making such a row”—to the aspect of the “old lady,” as he called her, though Agnes was younger than himself, by his side. “You see,” he added, “it makes a difference, I suppose, when they are one’s own—otherwise I object as much as you to the young ones taking the lead. It’s one of those American fashions we are all getting infested with.”
“It is an exceptional day,” said Agnes, stiffly, as if she disapproved. She was not able to change the fashion of her countenance, notwithstanding the sympathy of her heart.
“That’s it,” said John. “Your eldest boy can’t come of age but once in your life”—he laughed at this wise speech as he made it—“and then,” he added, caressing his big moustache, “the boys acquitted themselves so well. That’s what I look at. A boy mayn’t be strong, but as long as he knows how to take his part in life——”
“Papa,” said Tiny, “do you call a tenants’ dinner life?”
“It’s life in a kind of way,” said Duke, whose attention had been attracted from more mirthful matters by that sound which would catch the ear through a bombardment or a cyclone, the sound of praise.
“They have all votes for the county,” said Mar, whose ear had been drawn in the same magical way.
“That’s a very good answer, Mar,” said John. “Life’s whatever you have to do with in the condition you are in. And I can tell you that to make such a speech when you’re suddenly called upon is one of the things—— I can tell you this. It makes my heart sink down into my boots. I’d rather meet a mad dog any day——”
“It’s not so hard, Uncle John,” said Mar, unable altogether to suppress the instinctive desire of youth to instruct its elders, “when you have no time to think at all, but must just carry on.”
John shook his head. “When you have to tell them you can’t take off ten per cent. off their rent—it’s not so easy,” he said. “They don’t sing ‘He’s a jolly good fellow,’ then.”
“It wasn’t Mar that was the jolly good fellow, it was Duke,” said Tiny.
“It was both of them,” cried Jack from across the table.
“I started it myself,” cried Reggie; “I know who I meant.”
“It was Duke,” said Miss Hill, to the great astonishment of the young ones. “It is not a thing I would ever sing—but I started it too. And Duke, if I ever was unkind to you—”
“You—unkind!” cried the young man with his laughing voice, in which the tears he was ashamed of were half audible. “But look here. I thought of what you said, Aunt Agnes. Now, father, listen, that boy’s not to be Mar any longer. He’s to be Frogmore.”
“Oh, Froggy—that is what I shall call him,” said the little girl.
“What are you all saying?” cried Letty, who was making conversation for the vicar at the other end of the table, but who could bear it no longer. “Oh, what are you saying? You are keeping all the fun to yourselves, and I can’t hear a word you say.”
The boys began to sing, drowning her voice—the two schoolboys who had lost their heads altogether. Reggie “started” again, as he said, the chorus of the rest; but as Jack began a different performance altogether to the strain of ‘Froggy he would a wooing go,’ the two tunes clashed for a moment, until attracted by the superior appropriateness of the new ditty Reggie abandoned his first inspiration and chimed in, while Duke rising up cried, “We’ll drink his health again, and christen him for the family, Frogmore!”
That moment, however, an electric shock ran down the table, the song died off into silence. Letitia rose from her place pale with wrath. “How can you permit such a Babel,” she cried. “I am ashamed of you, John. If it goes on another moment I shall have to leave the room: let me hear no more of this nonsense and childish folly here.”
When Agnes went upstairs after this genial but interrupted meal she was met by her sister’s maid, who begged her to go at once to Lady Frogmore. “My lady’s very restless,” said the attendant, who was something more than a maid, the same who had brought her home after her recovery. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong?” said Agnes, breathless, for notwithstanding the tranquillity of so many years, any trifle was enough to arouse her anxieties. “Oh, I hope not,” said the maid. This was enough, it need not be said, to send Miss Hill trembling to her sister’s side. Mary was lying very quietly in bed, with some boxes on the table beside her, and a miniature of her husband, which she always carried about with her, in her hands. “You wanted me, Mary?” “No,” said Lady Frogmore, gently; then, after a pause—“Yes: I hope you will not be disappointed, dear Agnes, I think I must go home.”
“Home! but we came for Duke’s party.”
“I know; but I do not think I can remain any longer. Perhaps if you were to stay——”
“I will not stay if you go, Mary.”
“I thought Letitia would not mind so much if one of us was here. I can’t stay, I can’t,” said Mary, with a little sudden burst of tears. “Don’t ask me. My head goes round and round——”
“No, indeed,” said her sister; “no one shall ask you. I feared it might be too much; and then the tent was so hot this afternoon.”
“The tent?” said Lady Frogmore, with a bewildered look. “I am not thinking of any tent. It is that the place is strange. I can’t look him in the face, Agnes. Look! don’t you think he is changed? He seems to reproach me.” She held the miniature out to her sister. “And I don’t know what for,” she cried, weeping. “If I knew what it was for I could do better. But I can’t tell, I can’t tell.” After a minute she dried her eyes and looked at her sister again with a faint smile. “Don’t look so frightened, Agnes, as if you thought I was—silly, or something. No, I know it’s only a picture. I don’t mean the miniature has changed; but when I see his face in my heart he always seems to reproach me. What have I done? Oh, if I only knew what I had done!”
“Dear Mary,” said Agnes, “don’t trouble your mind with imaginations. It is all fancy. Do you think Frogmore, who was so fond of you, would trouble your poor innocent soul with a reproach? Oh no, oh no.”
“I think so, too,” said Mary, “but sometimes there comes a terror over me as if I have neglected something or forgotten something. If he sees us, Agnes, he must know I never meant it! He must know I never meant it! People can’t grow less understanding but more understanding when they die.”
“Surely,” said Agnes, “don’t you remember, dear, in ‘In Memoriam’—with larger, other eyes than ours?”
“It must be so,” said Mary, holding her sister’s hand. “But I have such a dreadful feeling as if I had done something wrong.”
“No, no, my dear; no, my poor dear.”
“If I have it has been in ignorance, Agnes. I have never intended— Look,” she said, suddenly turning to the table at the bedside, “do these old things belong to me?”
Poor Agnes took this change of subject for a sign of still further derangement of her sister’s troubled thoughts. She gave a slight glance at the little common-place boxes. “Oh, my dear, don’t think of such trifling things,” she said.
“Agnes, look. Do they belong to me?”
“These boxes? yes. I think so—they used to hold your work. They used to——” Then Agnes paused, for she suddenly remembered where the larger of the two, an Indian box in sandal wood, inlaid with ivory and silver, had always stood, and the last use that had been made of it. “They are not of any consequence. They can’t have anything to do with what we are speaking of,” she said.
“You are sure they are mine?” said Mary, interrogating her face with anxious eyes.
“Oh, Mary, dear! yes, I am sure enough. They were put into a cupboard, I remember. There is a train about eleven, but perhaps to-morrow you may think differently. It will be a great disappointment for the boys.”
Mary looked at her fixedly as if trying to understand. Then she said, “Tell Martin, Agnes, to pack them up. I want to look into them, perhaps there is something in them that will show— But not here, not here!”
“It shall be just as you please,” said Agnes, kissing Lady Frogmore’s pale face. Martin whispered that she would not go to bed, that she did not like her lady’s looks, that she would call Agnes at once in case of any need, thus securing for poor Agnes a wakeful and miserable night, as it is the habit of careful attendants to do. But it turned out that there was no occasion for this zeal. Mary slept, or at least was very quiet all the night. But she had not changed her mind in the morning. “Don’t ask me to stay,” she cried “I can’t, I can’t stay.” It was the morning of the ball, and the household at the Park was so much absorbed by that great event that so small a matter as the departure of a guest did not tell much. Agnes found Duke out of doors, closely attended, like his shadow, by Mar, just setting out upon some long expedition to cheat the hours until it should be time for lunch. “The day before a ball is always such a long day,” he said with simplicity. “We are going off to pass the time.” “And I am going off,” said Agnes, “though not to pass the time. I am glad I have found you two to say good-bye.”
“You are going away!” they both cried in consternation.
“I knew,” cried Agnes, with a certain relief in expressing her feeling, “I knew it would be too much for her bringing her here. Oh, yes, it’s true I was anxious to come. I wanted her to come, but I always felt it was a risk. Dear boys, I’m going to take you into my confidence. You’re such friends! Thank God, you’re such friends! Well, then, I can tell you, I think she is beginning to awake.”
“Aunt Mary?” said Duke, with a tone of awe. Mar said nothing, but his pale face crimsoned over, and he never took his eyes from his aunt’s face.
“I think she’s been in a kind of sleep all this time. Yesterday had a great effect upon her. She told me after, she had dreamed that there had been a great dinner and toasts, and one was to her old Frogmore. It has disturbed her mind, and she is going away.”
“Oh,” cried Duke, “that’s not nice of Aunt Mary. My ball! I’ll go and beg her to stay.”
Mar said nothing, but kept his eyes on Agnes’ face, watching her looks.
“You may go and say good-bye to her; but not Mar. And don’t say anything of Mar, especially not as Frogmore. And Mar, my dear, you must keep away. She is so much excited already. You must not show yourself. She has found some old things she had before you were born, and I think her memory is beginning to awake. But, my dear, you must keep away.”
“She does not seem to notice whether I keep away or whether I show myself,” said Mar. “Was ever such a thing dreamed of as that’s one mother—one’s mother! should cast one off. In all the books I have ever read there has never been anything like this.”
“Do you think it is her fault?” said Agnes, with sudden anger.
“How can I tell?” cried the boy. “It is no one’s fault, perhaps; but that does not make it any easier to bear.”
“I could tell you whose fault it was,” cried Agnes. “Oh, nothing easier: but it is not your poor mother, the unfortunate victim, who is to blame.”
Mar’s eyes blazed in his pale face. “Who is it? Who is it?” he cried.
“Oh, what a wicked woman I am,” cried Agnes, suddenly coming to herself, “that I should try to make you hate another person who perhaps had not as bad a meaning as I think. Oh, Mar, don’t let us ask whose fault it was. Pray God only that it may be coming right—that my poor Mary—— You don’t love your mother, Mar.”
The boy looked at her intently, keenly, with his bright, anxious eyes. He looked for a moment as if about to speak, and then turned hastily away.
“Ah, well,” said Agnes, with a sigh, “perhaps it is too much to expect: but some time you will know better. She says that your father reproaches her; that his face in his picture is changed; that she has done something wrong and displeased him; but what it is she does not know. O, my poor Mary, my poor Mary! And there is only me to stand by her in the whole world.”
Mar turned round again with his big eyes all veiled and clouded with tears. He tried to speak and could not. The boy was overwhelmed with feelings which were too strong for him, which he could not either master or understand.
“There is the carriage going to fetch her,” said Agnes, “and I must go too. Good-bye, Mar. Oh, it’s a dreadful disappointment to me to go so soon, not to have any more of you. I was your mother when you were little, Mar. You were my baby, and now I don’t see you from year’s end to year’s end. Nobody thinks it is anything to me.”
“Aunt Agnes——”
“Oh Mar, my dear, never mind me, but think sometimes of your poor mother living in a dream and not knowing—and that she may wake up before she dies. God bless you, God bless you, my little Mar.”
Mar was not to be found when Duke came back to look for him, half touched, half triumphant, having given Lady Frogmore, he thought, a few things to think of, though he had not mentioned her son. He had kept his consigné according to the letter of Agnes’ instructions, but he had given a hint or two of someone who was waiting for him, and people whom Aunt Mary would not care to see. “I know how particular you are,” the young man had said. Lady Frogmore had not seemed to understand him, but no doubt she understood him, and he hoped would feel ashamed of herself. All this he meant to pour upon Mar, to indemnify him, by the fact that other people cared for him, for his mother’s neglect; but Mar was nowhere to be found. He did not appear at all till late in the afternoon, when he came in very tired and pale, stumbling upstairs to the schoolroom so fatigued that he could scarcely drag one foot after the other. He said he had been in the woods, that he had not wanted any luncheon, that he wanted nothing now except to lie down a little and rest, when his cousins and the servants surrounded him open-mouthed. “Oh, Mar, mamma is so angry. She will not let you come to the ball,” cried Tiny; and Letty gave him a little lecture upon making everybody anxious. But the worst of all was when Letitia herself appeared with a basin of soup in her hand and wrath in her countenance. “I did not think after all the fuss that has been made about you that you would choose this day to put us all out,” she cried, “but I ought to have known that it was just the fuss and nonsense that would turn your silly head. Take this at once, and you can go to bed: for you certainly shan’t come down again to-night.”
“I don’t want anything,” said Mar, turning his head from the light.
“Take it this moment,” cried Letitia; “I am not going to be trifled with. Nourishment you must have, and you shall have it so long as I am here to see after you. I have got a hundred things to do, but I shan’t leave this room till you have taken it. You can do what you will with the others, but you shall not overcome me.”
“Oh, take it, Mar, take it; and then we shall be by ourselves, and I will sit with you,” said Tiny. Mar was too tired almost to lift his head, but he had a forlorn sense of youthful dignity, and would not give battle over the soup. And after he had swallowed it he dozed a little, and was conscious for a time of the comforting presence of Tiny, who, indeed, did a great deal for him in staying half-an-hour with him when there was so many conflicting occurrences going on downstairs—the decorations of the ballroom and the laying of the long tables, and the flowers and all the preparations for the evening, which were fast turning the sober everyday house into a fairy palace. She stole away as soon as she had thought he had gone to sleep, not without a struggle with her conscience, which she put to silence by asking it indignantly what good she could do to Mar when he was asleep? The boy dozed most of the evening, and when Duke and Letty rushed into the room to announce a second victory over their mother, and that he must get up directly for the ball, Mar only shook his head. He said they were to put his windows open so that he might hear the music and that he would go to bed. And it was thus that Mar spent the evening of the ball. He lay awake and heard the music, and wondered to himself how they were enjoying it, and if it was as beautiful as he had fancied it would be, and whether Letty was dancing all the time, and if they ever thought of him lying upstairs listening. They had all promised to come and see him from time to time, but nobody came except Tiny on her way to bed, very angry to be sent upstairs at twelve o’clock, and spoiling the effect of her toilette by her rage and her tears. “They are going to keep it up for hours,” cried Tiny, “and how is a person to sleep with all that row going on.” It amused him faintly to see how angry Tiny was, and that she had entirely forgotten that he had already lain awake listening to it for hours that seemed to him endless. Then when fatigue began to conquer his wakefulness, and he was nearly asleep, there flashed in a brilliant couple, Letty and Duke, making a tour de valse in Mar’s little room, and bringing him sweetmeats from the supper table. They did not come at the promised time, but as soon as they remembered, with the careless, frank affectionateness of brothers and sisters—“It is nearly dawn,” said Mar, lifting his dazzled eyes. “Oh not for hours yet,” they cried, valsing off again, almost before he could say “How beautiful you are, Letty.” It vexed the boy that she did not hear him say it, and the sound of the carriages rattling up and down the avenue kept him awake for the rest of the night. But it was no longer night; it was bright morning when the visitors went away, and the house fell into uneasy silence at last—silence that did not last long; for, of course, the servants had to be up again to put everything straight, and prepare for the needs of the new day. Poor Mar, he too had looked forward a little to the ball, to see it, and decide whether it was as fine in reality as it was in books, and to see Letty dancing, and to hear all the pleasant things that would be said of Duke. It was not so bad for him as it would have been for a girl, who would have wanted to dance and not merely to look on; but still it was a forlorn way of spending the first night of splendor that since ever he was born had taken place in his own house.
Letitia’s triumph and delight when she found that she was to have her ball to herself, without the presence either of Lady Frogmore, who would have made her seem second in what she called her own house, or Mar, who would have been the hero of the evening had he appeared, were almost more than words could say. It seemed to her too good to be true that Mary should come, giving thus her sanction and approval, and then go away, interfering with nothing; and that Mar should play into her hands, and disqualify himself by the fatigue of his long ramble, a thing which she could not have hoped for! It seemed to Mrs. Parke as if Providence had taken the matter in hand, and was fighting for her. It is easy to be pious when things go so much to one’s mind, and it is always so easy to deceive one’s-self about the virtuousness of one’s aims. When a woman is scheming for her children, and their benefit, does it not seem as if the stars in their courses should fight for her? And Letitia would have indignantly flung off the charge of selfishness: was it not all for Duke?—for her husband and her children? that they should have everything they wanted and a happy life; that they should, if possible, have all the honours of the race secured to them, or at least should triumph as much as possible over the untoward accident which had alienated these honors. It was not for herself, Letitia would have said, with fine indignation—what could it matter for her? and what could it be supposed but a mother’s first and highest duty to strive for the advantage of Duke.
It must not be supposed, however, that Mrs. Parke’s treatment of Mar had any distinct evil intention. It was her real conviction that the boy would not live, and she dealt with him as the man in the parable dealt with the talent which was given to him to make profit of, and which he laid up in a napkin. Had she been more generously inspired she would have endeavored, even by taking a risk, to stimulate the forces of the delicate boy. Had he been her own son this is what she would have done; but Letitia’s first thought was, not to save him, but that it might not be said he had been exposed to any danger while under her charge. She thought that she protected herself from all blame by making a hothouse plant of the boy, and shutting him up from every wind that blew. “No one can say he has not been taken every care of,” she said. Should “anything happen,” she, at least, would thus be free from blame. It would be known to all that she had been more careful of him than of her own—that she had not suffered the winds of heaven to visit his cheeks too roughly. That she had kept him from fatigue, from excitement, from everything calculated to hurt him. And in all this she was sincere enough. That she had also wished to ignore him, to keep him in the background, to give her own children the advantages which were meant chiefly for Mar, did not hurt her conscience. It was not for herself—she derived no benefit from the fact that Mar was not sent to school—on the contrary it was a self denial to her, a bond preventing her from amusing herself as she would, never leaving home except for a day or two. That it gave to Duke the principal place, and made John a much more important person in the county, were objects unconnected with Mrs. Parke’s personality—then how could she be called selfish? It can never be selfishness to strive for the pre-eminence of your husband and your child. Thus Letitia made her conscience quite comfortable when it did by chance give her a pinch. But generally it must be said her perfect conviction that she was right, whatever she did, daunted her conscience and kept everything quiet. Of course she was right! She had a delicate boy to bring up who everybody said would never be reared, and she took such care of him that he was never exposed to a draught, or suffered to escape from the cotton wool in which her assiduous and constant attention enveloped him. What could a woman do more? She thus put herself beyond the possibility of reproach whatever happened, while strengthening the conviction of everybody around that the young Lord Frogmore would never live to grow up; but if people chose to form that conclusion the fault was not Letitia’s. She shared it indeed herself, and shook her head over the state of Mar’s health; but when amiable neighbors said, “If care will save him I am sure, dear Mrs. Parke, you will do it,” she shook her hand again. “I do all I can,” she said, “at the risk of being told I do more harm than good. Some people think I should try bracing for him—exposing him like the other children. But I think it is best to be on the safe side. I shall be blamed anyhow, whatever happens, I know,” she would add with a smile. She would have convinced anyone; and she did convince herself. She thought she was only angry with Mar because it was so difficult to make him take proper precautions. She was certain that she wished nothing but his good.
It may be supposed that the exhibition in the tent, the sudden surging up of Mar—the delicate boy whom nobody knew—into a distinct boyish personality, suddenly producing himself in the most attractive and characteristic way at Duke’s dinner, when she intended only Duke to be thought of, was gall and bitterness to Letitia. She was almost beside herself with rage and exasperation. It had been all planned for Duke. It had been intended to give him the aspect of the heir (which he was sure to be eventually), and if there can be supposed any more sharp deception, any more poignant disappointment than Letitia’s, when she saw the other boy, who was the shadow upon Duke’s sunshine, the barrier to his advancement, pushed to the front, and so conducting himself there as to make it for ever impossible to speak of him as of a sick and puny child—it would be very difficult to find it. That she could have strangled Mar, and also Duke and Letty, and everyone who was in the complot, in the exasperation of her soul, is not too much to say. She had to conceal this under the appearance of anxiety lest the boy should have harmed himself, and discoursed, as has been seen, on the danger of excitement for him with a bitterness and energy which went too far, and betrayed something of her real motive at least to some of her children. But that real motive was not a guilty one. It was only to keep Mar in the background and bring forward her own boy. That was all—only to make Duke first, which by an accident he was not—which he ought to be by age, the other being really no more than a child, a child to whom it was pernicious to be brought forward like that, to be forced out of the quiet life which was the only thing possible to him. Letitia found herself able to carry matters with a high hand, both with her conscience and those keen critics her children. Of course she was angry. It was the very worst thing that could have happened to Mar. And for his poor mother, who had fainted, what a shock!
When it happened after this that Mary fled, taking a hurried leave, excusing herself anxiously, imploring Letitia not to think her unkind, and left the course clear; and that Mar in his elation possibly after yesterday, and foolish fancy that he had emancipated himself, went and took that long walk and unfitted himself for the fatigue of the evening, Letitia’s spirit, we will not say her heart, gave a bound of satisfaction. The stars in their courses were fighting for her. She was mistress of her own entertainment, undeniably the most important person, not over-shadowed by the woman who never ought to have been Lady Frogmore. And when the county ladies, so many of whom had heard of it, began to talk to her of the event of yesterday, and to express their satisfaction in hearing that her young nephew was so much stronger and had made quite a speech and such a good impression, Letitia felt herself supported by every right feeling in the gravity with which she still continued to shake her head. “Ah, poor Mar! yes, he did very well, poor boy, but it has cost him dear. I did not take much satisfaction in his speech, for I knew it would cost him dear.”
“I suppose he is here to-night,” said the great lady of the county, putting up her eyeglass and looking round her, “I want to see him if you will let me, for his father and I were great friends. I want to ask him to Highwood now he is getting old enough——”
“Oh, he is not here,” said Letitia. “He is in bed with a sort of nervous attack and great weakness. I tell my Duke his cousin was not able for excitement, but it is so difficult to make boys understand.”
“It was not that, mamma—it was the long walk,” whispered Letty at her ear.
“I see the Miss Winfords without partners,” said Mrs. Parke severely, “and shoals of young men about. Go and introduce them—you little horror!” said the mother, the last words under her breath, and she turned again to the great county lady. “I knew,” she said, “that he could not bear anything of the kind. Absolute quiet is the only thing that suits poor Mar. But my boy is very fond of him, and thinks it kindness to thrust him forward. All pure affection, but affection does just as much harm as enmity—or more sometimes.” Letitia spoke with a strength of conviction which much impressed the ladies who were listening. “It is a great disappointment to us all,” she said, “poor boy, that he can’t be here to-night.”
The same question was put to her again and again during the evening. “Where is little Frogmore? I want to see little Frogmore. I hear he quite distinguished himself at your tenants’ dinner, Parke.” “What have you done with the boy? I made sure we should see him to-night.” “Where is the young lord?”
These were the demands that flew about on every side.
John, carefully tutored by his wife, made an answer as much like hers as it was possible for so different a speaker to make.
“Yes, he made a famous speech. He’s a fine boy, but overdid himself, and my wife has put him to bed. My wife’s too careful over the boy,” said John.
“Ah, it is a great responsibility to have the care of children that are not your own,” said someone standing by.
“I suppose so,” said Mr. Parke, smoothing his big moustache.
The responsibility would not have moved John. He would have let Mar take his chance with the rest, and made no difference; but he had been well tutored, and made to see that this would never do. “A mother’s always anxious, you know,” he said. “As for me, I think it does more harm than good.”
Letitia had, after much vexation, come to the conclusion that it was not a bad thing John should talk like this. It would show that there was no agreement between them for keeping Mar out of the way.
And the ball was most brilliantly successful—more successful, everyone said, than any ball in the county had been for years. There was no shadow at all upon it—no reminder to the family that they were temporary tenants, and that in a few years they would all have to retire from the scene, which they all used, and rejoiced in as if it were their own.
Mrs. Parke, in the satisfaction of finding all possible rivalry absent, felt that her feet were upon her native heath as she had never done: she talked to everybody of Duke’s prospects, and of the difference it made when he came home. She spoke of the younger boys who would have their own way to make, and must not think they would always have their father’s house to fall back upon. She spoke of John’s good intelligence with the “tenants,” and how well he was getting on with the Home Farm, which he had taken into his own hands. For this night only she forgot to be careful; she took the full enjoyment of the position, as if everything was her own. Nearly a dozen years she had been in the house, with full command of everything. The children had grown up in it. How could she help feeling that it was her own? She forgot all about guardians and executors, and it seemed to her for a blessed hour or two as if all difficulties had been smoothed away, and Duke was indeed the heir, and she herself all but Lady Frogmore. Moments of intoxication will come like this in everybody’s career—when we remember nothing that is against us, and are able to believe that all we wish is going to be fulfilled. It was remarked how Mrs. Parke’s eyes, not bright by nature, glittered, and how her little person seemed to swell with satisfaction and pride as she moved about doing the honors. But her aspect, I am afraid, was not regarded with sympathy by the greater part of her guests. We are all apt to believe that the outer world takes our view and regards matters from our standing point in such a moment of triumph. But as a matter of fact that is precisely the time when it does not do so. Letitia’s neighbors whispered to each other that Mrs. Parke looked as if everything belonged to her—“which it doesn’t at all, you know,” and talked as if her husband was the head of the house and her son the heir—“whereas, as soon as little Frogmore comes of age they must all pack off.” They thought it bad taste of Letitia not to have produced the boy. “If he’s as ill as that she might have had him on the sofa. He ought to have showed for a little,” they said. But Mrs. Parke was quite unconscious of their sentiments. There never had been a time in her life when she had so ignored them. Always till now she had retained a consciousness of what people would be saying. But this evening it had vanished from her mind. She was fey, as people say in Scotland; her prosperity had gone to her head and made her forget everything that was not delightful. Either some great and critical moment or perhaps death itself was in her way.
“Well,” she said, when all was over, “it has gone off as I never saw anything go off before. Everything went well, the music and the floor and the supper and the temper of the people. They were all so pleasant. The old marchioness made me the prettiest of speeches. She said, ‘The Park has never been so brilliant as in your time.’ The young people hoped we would have one every year. I said perhaps—for after all there is nothing so easily managed as a ball when it is a success.”
“You must remember, Letitia,” said John, “that there cannot be very many years now before we’ve got to march out bag and baggage.”
“Oh, don’t speak nonsense,” she cried incredulously. In the sweep of her excitement she would not receive that thought.
“But, mother, it’s true,” said Duke. “I’ve liked the ball awfully. You are one for this sort of thing, nobody can do it like you. But of course when Mar comes of age——”
“Oh, don’t speak to me of Mar. He’ll never come of age!” she cried in the wildness of her elated mood. There was a universal cry: “Letitia! Mother! Mamma!” in different tones of indignation and horror.
She was driven out of all sense of decorum in her heat and excitement. “Oh, you set of fools!” Letitia said.
Next morning Mar, who had slept little all night, was found to be feverish and unwell, which was a state of affairs by no means unusual or alarming, but which gave to Letitia a sort of additional triumph. “What did I say to you?” she cried. “You dragged him out of the quiet that is natural at his age and forced him to make a public appearance. You seem quite pleased with yourselves, all of you, though I told you what would happen. And here he is in bed again, and no telling when he may be allowed to get up.”
“It was the walk yesterday, mamma,” said Letty, “and not sleeping, what with the noise and the music. It was not making that speech——”
“Of course you must know best,” said the mother, “and you have favored me with your opinion to that effect before.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t please be angry. Mar says he is quite well enough to get up. He says it is only because he didn’t sleep.”
“Of course, he knows best,” said Letitia. “You are all so sure of your own wisdom. But I hope it will convince you that for his own interests that sort of thing must not be done.”
She went away, however, without giving any distinct orders, and Mar got up. But when he was up he was giddy and “queer,” so he said, and quite disposed to lie down again. The tide of life was so strong in the house with all these young people about that a delicate boy was not much remarked. Duke would rush up in the middle of his own occupation with his tennis bat still in his hand, or in his cricketing costume fresh from the village green, and say “Hallo, Mar! no better? You must get better, old fellow, and come and have a game.” And Letty came in many times a day to ask how he was getting on. “You really must be better to-morrow, Mar,” she said. “Mamma puts it all down to the tenants’ dinner, and says you should not have been allowed to speak. She puts all the blame on Duke and me.”
“There is no blame,” said Mar; “it is only that I am such a poor creature. I am never good for anything.”
“Well, you must be better to-morrow,” Letty would say, and go off to her ride, or perhaps to her tennis which she too played very well. And then Tiny would come in with her hair flying in her haste, as soon as her lesson was over. “Are you better, Mar?”
“Oh, yes a little, but I shall not go downstairs to-day,” the boy would say, smiling at her.
“Oh, it is too tiresome,” cried Tiny; “I want you to come with me and get some water-lilies out of the pond. Duke’s always so busy; he will never do anything. And I want you to come down the village with me to see the man about those little dachshund puppies. It is too bad of you, Mar, to be ill now. I want you so much.”
“I am very sorry, Tiny, but you see I can’t help myself.”
“Oh, you could if you would try hard; just put on a resolution and make up your mind, and do, do be better to-morrow!” cried Tiny with vehemence. It is to be feared that this earnestness was simply on Tiny’s own account, to whom Mar was a most serviceable follower—but the boy was grateful for this vigorous demand.
“I will if I can,” he said—and then Tiny flew off with her hair waving, and he remained till the next visitor arrived. To tell the truth it was rather pleasant to them all to find him there always ready to hear what they had to say; and when they expressed their impatience with his illness, or ordered him imperiously to get well, they were though unconsciously only half sincere. “It’s nice to have you to run to always, Mar,” Tiny said, who, being the youngest, was the most unabashed in the utterance of fact. And Mar smiled and replied that it was nice to have them all coming to him. “If I am ever dull I know I shall soon hear someone running upstairs.”
“But remember,” cried Tiny, “you have promised to be better to-morrow.”
“Oh yes,” said Mar, “I shall be better to-morrow.”
“If you don’t, I heard mamma say she would send for the doctor, Mar.”
“I shall be better,” cried the boy. And as a matter of fact he did drag himself downstairs and got out to the avenue in a dutiful endeavor to follow Tiny to see after the dachshund puppies; but he grew so pale, and so soon found out that he could not drag one foot after the other, that a great panic arose among the young people. Duke was called from his tennis (for there were visitors that afternoon and a great game was going on) by Tiny in a voice more like that of a signal man in a gale than of a young lady. “Duke!” she said, “Mar’s fainted!” which brought Duke with a rush like a regiment of cavalry across the lawn, followed by Letty, her white dress flashing like a ray of light across the shadows. Mar fainted! They flung themselves upon him where he half sat, half lay upon a great trunk of a tree which had lain there for years overgrown with moss and lichens—the very same upon which Mary his mother had once thrown herself before he was born.
“No—I haven’t fainted—I’m only—very tired. I’ll go in again directly,” said Mar.
“Oh can’t you carry him home, Duke? We’ll help you. Oh it is all my fault,” cried Tiny, “if I had only known!”
“Old fellow,” cried Duke, who had the tears in his eyes, “if you’ll put your arms round my neck I’ll carry you. I can, I can. Oh I wish you were twice the weight.”
“Don’t worry him,” cried Letty. “He would rather walk with your arm and mine. Oh, I did not know you were so ill, Mar!”
Here Letitia came hurrying towards them, which brought a little color back to Mar’s cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “You have stopped two games rushing off like mad creatures. Oh, I might have known it was Mar.”
“The two games may go to—Bath,” cried Duke, flinging away from him with disdain the racquet which he had still been holding in his hand.
“I’m quite able to walk now,” said Mar. “I’ll go home. Go back to your game, please. I’m not very well, Aunt Letitia. I couldn’t get on any further, and Tiny took fright; that’s all.”
“You can give him your arm indoors, Duke, which he never ought to have quitted. I can’t conceive what he means. He is always doing something to pose as if he was not taken care of. Letty, go back to your friends—go back when I tell you! I hope I know how to manage him. You can tell the doctor to come when he has finished his game. It is a good thing he is here. Now come along, Mar; a little energy. If you could walk so far as this coming out, you may surely get back again.”
“Oh, easily,” said Mar. And though it was not easy at all he accomplished it, and got back to the sofa in the schoolroom, where he had spent so many wistful days, putting the best face upon it that he could, and urging Duke to return to his game, which that light-hearted youth, quite reassured to see that his cousin could walk and could smile, did not hesitate to do, flying downstairs heaven knows how many steps at a time to get back to his play. The anxious group which had gathered around Mar like a whirlwind, dispersed again in the same way, relieved, and thinking no evil. Oh, yes, he was better—no worse than he often was; nothing to be frightened about.
“And now, let’s finish our game,” said Duke.
The robust yet careless family affection, which would have done anything for the weakling among them, left him cheerful and comforted as soon as he was “better,” having no anxious thought.
And Mar was left to Letitia and her terse and unemotional questionings. It was Mrs. Parke’s habit to take all his ailments as a sort of reproach to herself.
“You might have known that it was not fit for you to go out in the blazing sun,” she said; “but you seem to take a pleasure in behaving as if no attention was ever paid to you.”
She went and got him a cushion with her own hands, and thrust it under his head with an irritable movement, and walked up and down the room, drawing down a blind over the window which gave Mar a glimpse of the sky and green trees he loved, and putting things in order which needed no arrangement.
“The doctor is a long time over his game,” she said to the old nurse, who still attended to the wants of the schoolroom. “I think he might have come before now.”
“Don’t let me keep you up here, Aunt Letitia,” said Mar. “There is not much the matter with me; it is a pity to trouble the doctor.”
“You will please not meddle with what I do, Mar,” she replied. “If you would only pay a little attention to what may be expected from yourself——”
The doctor came at last, and asked a great many questions and looked very grave. He ordered Mar to bed, not to lie on the sofa any longer, and gave a great many directions about quiet and fresh air and beef tea. He himself helped the boy to his room, and was so careful and so kind that there came to Mar’s mind a half elation, half melancholy, in the thought that he was going to be ill—that at last, after his years of delicate health, there was going to be something the matter with him which would prove all that Mrs. Parke had said, and of which he would possibly die. A great excitement, silent and suppressed, rose in his mind with this thought. It was alarming and strange, but it was not altogether unpleasing. There is a kind of pre-eminence, of superiority, in being very ill to a boy. It was like going into a battle. He felt solemnized, yet half amused. He was to be the hero of a sort of drama—he was to be in danger of his life. It pleased his imagination, which had so little food. And he tried to catch what the doctor was saying when he followed Mrs. Parke into the next room. But by that time he was getting drowsy, and his faculties dulled, and this he could not do.
In the next room the conference was grave enough. “He has never been ill before,” said the doctor. “I ever told you so from the first, Mrs. Parke, delicate but not ill, and nothing that he might not shake off with time. But he is ill now. If I am not mistaken he is in for an attack of typhoid, and I fear a bad one. I’ll go straight to the hospital at Claremont and send you a nurse—indeed, you had better have two nurses—care is everything. With great care and unremitting attention we may pull him through.”
Letitia was pale, but she was ready for the emergency. “It will not be dangerous for the others?” she said.
“No, no, there’s no danger for the others—unless your drains are bad. But he says he was at that horrid little village on the other side of the Park on Friday last, and got a drink of water there. That’s enough to account for it. I’ve often spoken about the state of these cottages. It would be a kind of strange justice if he were to be the first victim. I suppose you’ll let his mother know?”
“What is the use of letting his mother know? She takes no notice of him. I think I am the only mother he has ever known.”
“There was an aunt,” said the doctor, “who was very much devoted to him. They ought to be told. The fever is high, and he has a delicate constitution. He may have to fight for his life.”
“Will you come again to-night?” she said.
“I will send the nurses in at once if I can get two, otherwise, perhaps, your old woman will take the night? I’ll come back first thing in the morning. But I think you should let the relations know.”
When the doctor was gone Letitia followed him out of the room and went to the schoolroom, which was quite cool and empty. She sat down upon the sofa which had supported Mar’s languid limbs so long, and looked round her as if upon a new world. Her whole being was filled with excitement which threatened to burst all bounds. She felt as if she must have burst forth in laughing or in crying, and if she did not do so it was because the influence of conventional rules and common decorum are too strong to be broken. Every pulse was going like the wheels of a steam engine, and her heart thumping like the great piston that keeps all in motion. Was it anxiety and alarm for Mar that roused that tremendous tumult in her brain? It is to be supposed that she thought so, or tried to make herself think so for the moment. But she knew very well that this was only a gloss forced by a horrified consciousness upon her, and that in the bottom of her heart it was a sudden and dreadful hope which had sprung up in her mind. The child had been so delicate all his life, one whom all the gossips declared she would never rear; and this had left a vague anticipation as of something she could not prevent, which would be good for them all if it came, modified by a fear of what might be said should it happen in her house, which kept Letitia always uneasy, and dictated those precautions which were half regard for other people’s opinion, and half terror of herself. But Mar, though he had been so delicate, had kept, perhaps for that very reason, curiously free of the usual ailments of childhood. When he had them he had them in the lightest form. Never before had this delicate boy, this interloper who stood between Letitia and so many advantages, this child who everybody prophesied could not live—never before had he visibly hung between life and death. Typhoid fever! It was a name to chill the blood in the veins of loving parents, of anxious friends. It made Letitia’s blood boil with a fever of impatience, of desire, of horrible eagerness, at which she was terrified, but which she could not restrain. It was not her fault. She had done nothing to bring it about. He had got the poison out of her house because of his own childish imprudence, exposing himself as she never would have allowed him to expose himself. Letitia’s conscience was quite clear, and nobody could blame her. And he would die—a creature so fragile, with so little life in him, no constitution to fall back upon: there was no fear of a long and terrible illness: a fever that sucked the strength away, and killed the strongest men, would not last long in such a case as this. He would die. She gasped with sensations unspeakable, and felt as if she could not get her breath. He would die. The obstacle would be taken away from her path, from John’s, from Duke’s, and nobody could say that she had done it, or was in any way to blame. What a thought to invade and fill her whole consciousness, all the being of a woman who was a mother, and knew what it was in a way to love those who belonged to her! She could not keep down the wild buoyancy of her hope and exhilaration. This boy, who never ought to have existed, who had been from his birth the obstacle to all her hopes, this supplanter, this undesired, unnecessary child—he would die! and for Letitia and all who belonged to her the future of her brightest hopes would be secured at last.
But with this there sprang up in her mind a dreadful impatience. It did not seem to her that she could go on day after day enduring all the vicissitudes of this illness until the crisis came—if indeed his strength held out till the crisis came. Sometimes the patient, if he were weak, collapsed early, and the disease did not run its full course; sometimes it was rapid, violent, foudroyant. A hundred confused calculations ran through her mind. Mar had not life enough for that. Probably the fever would be slow with his low vitality, not blazing but sapping the life away—and he would have to keep up all through—expressing anxiety, watching day and night for the change, looking on with outward calm while the doctors would go through all that daily pantomime with the thermometer, which she would scarcely be able to endure. Yes, this is how it would be—weeks of it, perhaps; horrible, lingering on when it might just as well be over at once without all this slow torture. Letitia remembered after what seemed a long time that she had an afternoon party on the lawn, and that all her guests would be wondering at her absence. She would have to put on a grave face, and speak of her anxiety and his delicacy, and go through all the fantastic performances which decorum demanded. But he would die—of that certainty at least there could be no doubt now.