to-night it did not come to me that there was any apprehension."

"Does he look so much worse to-night?"

"Not any worse than customary. Latterly he had looked just like this
in the evening. It was a remark of Hannah's that roused my alarm: she
thinks he is on the road to death. What can we do to save him?"

She clasped her hands as she spoke, in the intensity of her emotion. She
almost forgot, as they stood there together talking of the welfare of
the child, their child, that he was no longer her husband. Almost,
not quite, utterly impossible would it be for her wholly to forget the
dreadful present. Neither he nor the child could again belong to her in
this world.

A strange rising of the throat in her wild despair, a meek courtesy, as
she turned from him, his last words ringing in her ears: "I shall call
in further advice for him, Madame Vine."

William was clinging round Mrs. Carlyle, in a coaxing attitude, when she
re-entered the gray parlor. "I know what I could eat, mamma, if you'd
let me have it," cried he, in answer to her remonstrance that he must
eat something.

"What could you eat?"

"Some cheese."

"Cheese! Cheese with tea!" laughed Mrs. Carlyle.

"For the last week or two he has fancied strange things, the effect of
a diseased appetite," exclaimed Madame Vine; "but if I allow them to be
brought in he barely tastes them."

"I am sure, mamma, I could eat some cheese now," said William.

"You may have it," answered Mrs. Carlyle.

As she turned to leave the room, the impatient knock and ring of a
visitor was heard. Barbara wondered who could be arriving at that, their
dinner hour. Sailing majestically into the hall, her lips compressed,
her aspect threatening, came Miss Carlyle.

Now it turned out that Miss Corny had been standing at her own window,
grimly eyeing the ill doings of the street, from the fine housemaid
opposite, who was enjoying a flirting interview with the baker, to the
ragged urchins, pitch-polling in the gutter and the dust. And there she
caught sight of the string, justices and others, who came flowing out
of the office of Mr. Carlyle. So many of them were they that Miss Corny
involuntarily thought of a conjuror flinging flowers out of a hat--the
faster they come, the more it seems there are to come. "What on earth is
up?" cried Miss Corny, pressing her nose flat against the pane, that she
might see better.

They filed off, some one way, some another. Miss Carlyle's curiosi