hat do you allude to? Are you worse?"

Madame Vine did not answer. She glided away without speaking.

Later, when she was sitting by twilight in the gray parlor, cold and
shivering, and wrapped up in a shawl, though it was hot summer weather,
somebody knocked at the door.

"Come in," cried she, apathetically.

It was Mr. Carlyle who entered. She rose up, her pulses quickening, her
heart thumping against her side. In her wild confusion she was drawing
forward a chair for him. He laid his hand upon it, and motioned her to
her own.

"Mrs. Carlyle tells me that you have been speaking to her of
leaving--that you find yourself too much out of health to continue with
us."

"Yes, sir," she faintly replied, having a most imperfect notion of what
she did say.

"What is it that you find to be the matter with you?"

"I--think--it is chiefly--weakness," she stammered.

Her face had grown as gray as the walls. A dusky, livid sort of hue, not
unlike William's had worn the night of his death, and her voice sounded
strangely hollow. It, the voice, struck Mr. Carlyle and awoke his fears.

"You cannot--you never can have caught William's complaint, in your
close attendance upon him?" he exclaimed, speaking in the impulse of the
moment, as the idea flashed across him. "I have heard of such things."

"Caught it from him?" she rejoined, carried away also by impulse. "It is
more likely that he----"

She stopped herself just in time. _"Inherited it from me,"_ had been the
destined conclusion. In her alarm, she went off volubly, something to
the effect that "it was no wonder she was ill: illness was natural to
her family."

"At any rate, you have become ill at East Lynne, in attendance on my
children," rejoined Mr. Carlyle, decisively, when her voice died away.
"You must therefore allow me to insist that you allow East Lynne to
do what it can toward renovating you. What is your objection to see a
doctor?"

"A doctor could do me no good," she faintly answered.

"Certainly not, so long as you will not consult one."

"Indeed, sir, doctors could not cure me, nor, as I believe prolong my
life."

Mr. Carlyle paused.

"Are you believing yourself to be in danger?"

"Not in immediate danger, sir; only in so far as that I know I shall not
live."

"And yet you will not see a doctor. Madame Vine, you must be aware that
I could not permit such a thing to go on in my house. Dangerous illness
and no advice!"

She could not say to