t the
dowager's influence, as far as she could; and trust to time; doing her
own duty religiously by the children.

What Anne had not mentioned to Dr. Ashton was her husband's conduct in
the matter. In that one respect she could read him no better than of old.
Devoted to her as he was, as she knew him to be, in the children's petty
disputes he invariably took the part of his first wife's--to the glowing
satisfaction of the countess-dowager. No matter how glaringly wrong they
might be, how tyrannical, Hartledon screened the elder, and--to use the
expression of the nurses--snubbed the younger. Kind and good though Lady
Hartledon was, she felt it acutely; and, to say the truth, was sorely
puzzled and perplexed.

Lord Elster was an ailing child, and Mr. Brook, the apothecary, was
always in attendance when they were in London. Lady Hartledon thought the
boy's health might have been better left more to nature, but she would
not have said so for the world. The dowager, on the contrary, would have
preferred that half the metropolitan faculty should see him daily. She
had a jealous dread of anything happening to the boy, and Anne's son
becoming the heir.

Lord Hartledon was a busy man now, and had a place in the
Government--though not as yet in the Cabinet. Whatever his secret care
might have been, it was now passive; he was a general favourite, and
courted in society. He was still young; the face as genial, the manners
as free, the dark-blue eyes as kindly as of yore; eminently attractive in
earlier days, he was so still; and his love for his wife amounted to a
passion.

At the close of a sharp winter, when they had come up to town in January,
that Lord Hartledon might be at his post, and the countess-dowager was
inflicting upon them one of her long visits, it happened that Lord Elster
seemed very poorly. Mr. Brook was called in, and said he would send a
powder. He was called in so often to the boy as to take it quite as a
matter of course; and, truth to say, thought the present indisposition
nothing but a slight cold.

Late in the evening the two boys happened to be alone in the nursery,
the nurse being temporarily absent from it. Edward was now a tall,
slender, handsome boy in knickerbockers; Reginald a timid little fellow,
several years younger--rendered timid by Edward's perpetual tyranny,
which he might not resent. Edward was quiet enough this evening; he felt
ill and shivery, and sat close to the fire. Casting his e