ad nursed through more than one
outbreak at Miss Lang's, so her husband might take the comfort of knowing
that there was little anxiety on her account, though the doctor,
evidently expecting a severe attack, insisted on sending in a trained
nurse to assist her.

As the little boy had fortunately been in bed and asleep long before his
father came home, there was as yet no danger of infection for him, though
he must be sent out of the house at once.

Lady Adela was not at home, and Mary would have doubted about sending him
to the Cottage, even if she had been there; so she quickly made up her
mind that Eden and the young nursery-maid should take him at once to
Westhaven, to be either in the hotel or at Northmoor Cottage, according
as his aunt should decide.

How little she had thought, when she heard him say his prayers, and
exchanged kisses with him at the side of his little bed, that it was the
last time for many a long day; and that her hungry spirit would have to
feed itself on that last smile and kiss of the fat hand, as she looked
out of her husband's window as the carriage drove away.

Lady Adela knew too well what it was to be desolate not to come home so
as to be at hand, though she left her little daughter at her uncle's.
Bertha came on the following day.

'I feel as if it were all my doing,' she said. 'I could not bear it, if
it does not go well with him, after being the saving of poor little Cea.'

'There is nothing to reproach yourself with,' said sober-minded Lady
Adela. 'Neither you nor he could guess that he was running into
infection.'

'No,' said Bertha; 'of course, one never thinks of such things with
grown-up people, especially one whom one has always thought of as a
stick, and to whom perhaps ascribed some of its toughness,' she added,
smiling; 'but he did come home looking very white and worn-out, and
complained of horrible smells. No, dear man, he was far too punctilious
to use the word, he only said that he should like to send the Sanitary
Commission down the alley. I ought to have dosed him with brandy on the
spot, for of course he was too polite to ask for it, so I only gave him a
cup of _tea_,' said Bertha, with an infinite tone of scorn in the name of
the beverage.

'Will it be any comfort to tell you that most likely it would have been
too late even if he would have accepted it? Come, Bertha, how often are
we told that we are not to think so much of consequences as of actions,
a