ssionately and led her to a seat.

Mrs. Verner did not like the attention. Pity, compassion was in every
line of his face--in every gesture of his gentle hand; and she resented
it.

"I am not ill," she declared to Sir Edmund between the paroxysms of her
distressing cough. "The wind seemed to take my throat as I got out of
the fly, and it is making me cough a little, but I am not ill. Has Jan
been telling you that I am?"

She turned round fiercely on Jan as she spoke. Jan had followed her to
her chair, and stood near her; he may have deemed that so evident an
invalid should possess a doctor at hand. A good thing that Jan was of
equable disposition, of easy temperament; otherwise there might have
been perpetual open war between him and Sibylla. She did not spare to
him her sarcasms and her insults; but never, in all Jan's intercourse
with her, had he resented them.

"No one has told me anything about you in particular, Mrs. Verner," was
the reply of Sir Edmund. "I see that you look delicate."

"I am not delicate," she sharply said. "It is nothing. I should be very
well, if it were not for Jan."

"That's good," returned Jan. "What do I do?"

"You worry me," she answered curtly. "You say I must not go out; I must
not do this, or do the other. You know you do. Presently you will be
saying I must not dance. But I _will_."

"Does Lionel know you have come?" inquired Jan, leaving other questions
in abeyance.

"I don't know. It's nothing to him. He was not going to stop _me_. You
should pay attention to your own appearance, Jan, instead of to mine;
look at your gloves!"

"They split as I was drawing them on," said Jan.

Sibylla turned from him with a gesture of contempt. "I am enchanted that
you have come home, Sir Edmund," she said to the baronet.

"I am pleased myself, Mrs. Verner. Home has more charms for me than the
world knows of."

"You will give us some nice entertainments, I hope," she continued, her
cough beginning to subside. "Sir Rufus lived like a hermit."

That she would not live to partake of any entertainments he might give,
Sir Edmund Hautley felt as sure as though he had then seen her in her
grave-clothes. No, not even could he be deceived, or entertain the
faintest false hope, though the cough became stilled, and the brilliant
hectic of reaction shone on her cheeks. Very beautiful would she then
have looked, save for her attenuate frame, with that bright crimson
flush and her gleaming golden h