As soon as Toby had gone, Rosalie put the caravan in order, and awaited
anxiously the doctor's arrival. Her father brought him in, and stayed in
the caravan whilst he felt the poor woman's pulse, and asked Rosalie
several questions about her cough, which from time to time was so
distressing. Then they went out together, and little Rosalie was left in
suspense. She had not dared to ask the doctor what he thought of her mother
when her father was present, and her little heart was full of anxious fear.

Augustus came in soon after the doctor had left; and Rosalie crept up to
him, and asked what he had said of her mother.

'He says she is very ill,' said her father shortly, and in a voice which
told Rosalie that she must ask no more questions. And then he sat down
beside the bed for about half an hour, and looked more softened than
Rosalie had ever seen him before. She was sure the doctor must have told
him that her mother was very bad indeed.

Rosalie's father did not speak; there was no sound in the caravan but the
ticking of the little clock which was fastened to a nail in the corner, and
the occasional falling of the cinders in the ashpan. Augustus' reflections
were not pleasant as he sat by his wife's dying bed. For the doctor had
told him she would never be better, and it was only a question of time how
long she would live. And when Augustus heard that, all his cruel treatment
came back to his mind--the hard words he had spoken to her, the unkind
things he had said of her, and, above all, the hard-hearted way in which he
had made her come on the stage the night before, when she was almost too
ill to stand. All these things crowded in upon his memory, and a short fit
of remorse seized him. It was this which led him, contrary to his custom,
to come into the caravan and sit by her side. But his meditations became so