strangely round upon them all. Her gaze wandered lingeringly from object
to object in the hall as if she had never seen it before. She shivered
violently with deadly cold. "I will go to bed," she said.

The children helped her upstairs. She leant on Bessie's arm, the arm of
Deleah was round her waist. The stairway was broad, there was room for all
three. Bernard stood on the mat below and watched with an anxious face.

"Sure I can't do anything, mother?" he kept saying.

They were all so fond of her, so frightened if for a moment she seemed to
fail them. She could not get rid of them till they had undressed her and
put her to bed. Until they themselves went to bed they kept coming back
and peeping in at her. "Papa will be back soon; mind you send him for us
if you feel at all ill," they adjured her.

"Mama, you are sure it is not because I worried you about Reggie Forcus?"
a contrite Bessie asked. "Because he is sure to come to-morrow--you think
so, don't you?--and we shall make it all right, in spite of Sir Francis.
Promise not to worry, mama."

Twice in the night Deleah slipped from her own warm bed to stand, an
anxious little figure, shivering in her nightgown, her dark curls
streaming down her back, a suspensive ear to the keyhole of her mother's
door. People fainted because they had heart disease. Of heart disease they
also died. She dared not go in, because papa was there, but waited,
trembling with cold and fear, until her mother's sigh reassured her.

In the morning the mistress of the house came down with a pale face and
dark rings about her deeply-set large eyes. She could not smile, she could