again after a hurried breakfast, and Mrs. Peyton heard nothing of him till
nightfall. He had promised to be back for dinner, but a few moments before
eight, as she was coming down to the drawing-room, the parlour-maid handed
her a hastily pencilled note.

"Don't wait for me," it ran. "Darrow is ill and I can't leave him. I'll
send a line when the doctor has seen him."

Mrs. Peyton, who was a woman of rapid reactions, read the words with a
pang. She was ashamed of the jealous thoughts she had harboured of Darrow,
and of the selfishness which had made her lose sight of his troubles in the
consideration of Dick's welfare. Even Clemence Verney, whom she secretly
accused of a want of heart, had been struck by Darrow's ill looks, while
she had had eyes only for her son. Poor Darrow! How cold and self-engrossed
he must have thought her! In the first rush of penitence her impulse was
to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his own shyness
restrained her. Dick's note gave no details; the illness was evidently
grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion? To repair
her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion of his privacy might be
only a greater failure in tact; and after a moment of deliberation she
resolved on sending to ask Dick if he wished her to go to him.

The reply, which came late, was what she had expected. "No, we have all the
help we need. The doctor has sent a good nurse, and is coming again later.
It's pneumonia, but of course he doesn't say much yet. Let me have some
beef-juice as soon as the cook can make it."

The beef-juice ordered and dispatched, she was left to a vigil in
melancholy contrast to that of the previous evening. Then she had been
enclosed in the narrow limits of her maternal interests; now the barriers