out dying?"

"Oh, I know. I know by the fuss there is over me. You heard what Hannah
said the other night."

"What? When?"

"When she brought in the tea, and I was lying on the rug. I was not
asleep, though you thought I was. You told her she ought to be more
cautious, for that I might not have been asleep."

"I don't remember much about it," said Lady Isabel, at her wits' ends
how to remove the impression Hannah's words must have created, had he
indeed heard them. "Hannah talks great nonsense sometimes."

"She said I was going on fast to the grave."

"Did she? Nobody attends to Hannah. She is only a foolish girl. We shall
soon have you well, when the warm weather comes."

"Madame Vine."

"Well, my darling?"

"Where's the use of your trying to deceive me? Do you think I don't see
that you are doing it? I'm not a baby; you might if it were Archibald.
What is it that's the matter with me?"

"Nothing. Only you are not strong. When you get strong again, you will
be as well as ever."

William shook his head in disbelief. He was precisely that sort of child
from whom it is next to impossible to disguise facts; quick, thoughtful,
observant, and advanced beyond his years. Had no words been dropped in
his hearing, he would have suspected the evil, by the care evinced
for him, but plenty of words had been dropped; hints, by which he had
gathered suspicion; broad assertions, like Hannah's, which had too fully
supplied it; and the boy in his inmost heart, knew as well that death
was coming for him as that death itself did.

"Then, if there's nothing the matter with me, why could not Dr. Martin
speak to you before me to-day? Why did he send me into the other room
while he told you what he thought? Ah, Madame Vine, I am as wise as
you."

"A wise little boy, but mistaken sometimes," she said from her aching
heart.

"It's nothing to die, when God loves us. Lord Vane says so. He had a
little brother who died."

"A sickly child, who was never likely to live, he had been pale and
ailing from a baby," spoke Lady Isabel.

"Why! Did you know him?"

"I--I heard so," she replied, turning off her thoughtless avowal in the
best manner she could.

"Don't _you_ know that I am going to die?"

"No."

"Then why have you been grieving since we left Dr. Martin's? And why do
you grieve at all for me? I am not your child."

The words, the scene altogether, overcame her. She knelt down by the
sofa, and her tears burst forth f