autiously stood aside for Lady Kirton to take the head of the
table; but the dowager had positively refused, and subsided into the
chair at the foot. She did not fill it in dear Edward's time, she said;
neither should she in dear Val's; he had come home to occupy his own
place. And oh, thank goodness he was come! She and Maude had been so
lonely and miserable, growing thinner daily from sheer _ennui_. So she
faced Lord Hartledon at the end of the table, her flaxen curls surmounted
by an array of black plumes, and looking very like a substantial female
mute.

"What an awful thing that is about the Rectory!" exclaimed she, when they
were more than half through dinner.

Lord Hartledon looked up quietly. "What is the matter at the Rectory?"

"Fever has broken out."

"Is that all!" he exclaimed, some amusement on his face. "I thought it
must have taken fire."

"A fever's worse than a fire."

"Do you think so?"

"_Think so!_" echoed the dowager. "You can run away from a fire; but a
fever may take you before you are aware of it. Every soul in the Rectory
may die; it may spread to the parish; it may spread here. I have kept tar
burning outside the house the last two days."

"You are not serious, Lady Kirton!"

"I am serious. I wouldn't catch a fever for the whole world. I should die
of fright before it had time to kill me. Besides--I have Maude to guard.
You were forgetting her."

"There's no danger at all. One of the servants became ill after they
returned home, and it proved to be fever. I don't suppose it will
spread."

"How did _you_ hear about it?"

"From Miss Ashton. She mentioned it in her last letter to me."

"I didn't know you corresponded with her," cried the dowager, her tones
rather shrill.

"Not correspond with Miss Ashton!" he repeated. "Of course I do."

The old dowager had a fit of choking: something had gone the wrong way,
she said. Lord Hartledon resumed.

"It is an awful shame of those seaside lodging-house people! Did you hear
the particulars, Maude? After the Ashtons concluded their visit in Wales,
they went for a fortnight to the seaside, on their way home, taking
lodgings. Some days after they had been settled in the rooms they
discovered that some fever was in the house; a family who occupied
another set of apartments being ill with it, and had been ill before the
Ashtons went in. Dr. Ashton told the landlady what he thought of her
conduct, and then they left the house for home. But