found only Sir Harry, prowling in the
hall.

"I'm glad you've come, Joanna. I'm anxious about Martin."

"What's the matter? What did the doctor say?"

"He said there's congestion of the lung or something. Martin took a fit
of the shivers after you'd gone, and of course it made him worse when
the doctor said the magic word 'lung.' He's always been hipped about
himself, you know."

"I'd better go and see him."

She hitched the reins, and climbed down out of the trap--stumbling
awkwardly as she alighted, for she had begun to tremble.

"You don't think he's very bad, do you?"

"Can't say. I wish Taylor ud come. He said he'd be here again this
morning."

His voice was sharp and complaining, for anything painful always made
him exasperated. Martin lying ill in bed, Martin shivering and in pain
and in a funk was so unlike the rather superior being whom he liked to
pretend bullied him, that he felt upset and rather shocked. He gave a
sigh of relief as Joanna ran upstairs--he told himself that she was a
good practical sort of woman, and handsome when she was properly
dressed.

She had never been upstairs in North Farthing House before, but she
found Martin's room after only one false entry--which surprised the
guilty Raddish sitting at Sir Harry's dressing-table and smarming his
hair-cream on her ignoble head. The blinds in Martin's room were down,
and he was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, with his head turned away
from her.

"That you, father?--has Taylor come?"

"No, it's me, dearie. I've come to see what I can do for you."

The sight of him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless,
neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been
singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had
eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three
Marshes in each other's company, but she had scarcely ever been to his
house, never seen him asleep, and in normal circumstances would have
perished rather than gone into his bedroom. To-day when she saw him
there, lying on his wide, tumbled bed, among his littered
belongings--his clothes strewn untidily on the floor, his books on their
shelves, his pictures that struck her rigidity as indecent, his
photographs of people who had touched his life, some perhaps closely,
but were unknown to her, she had a queer sense of the revelation of
poor, pathetic secrets. This, then, was Martin when he was away from
her--untidy, sen