in this matter he was not a good manager. Her cousin, Will Belton, knew
how to manage much better.

On the next morning, however, all her thoughts respecting Captain
Aylmer were dissipated by tidings which Martha brought to her bedside.
Her aunt was ill. Martha was afraid that her mistress was very ill. She
did not dare to send specially for the doctor on her own
responsibility, as Mrs Winterfield had strong and peculiar feelings
about doctors' visits, and had on this very morning declined to be so
visited. On the next day the doctor would come in the usual course of
things, for she had submitted for some years back to such periodical
visitings; but she had desired that nothing might be done out of the
common way. Martha, however, declared that if she were alone with her
mistress the doctor would be sent for; and she now petitioned for aid
from Clara. Clara was, of course, by her aunt's bedside in a few
minutes, and in a few minutes more the doctor from the other side of
the way was there also.

It was ten o'clock before Captain Aylmer and Miss Amedroz met at
breakfast, and they had before that been together in Mrs Winterfield's
room. The doctor had told Captain Aylmer that his aunt was very ill
very ill, dangerously ill. She had been wrong to go into such a place
as the cold, unaired Town-hall, and that, too, in the month of
November; and the fatigue had also been too much for her. Mrs
Winterfield, too, had admitted to Clara that she know herself to be
very ill. 'I felt it coming on me last night,' she said, 'when I was
talking to you; and I felt it still more strongly when I left you after
tea. I have lived long enough. God's will be done.' At that moment,
when she said she had lived long enough, she forgot her intention with
reference to her will. But she remembered it before Clara had left the