ill, the income from the
Strathmere estate is enormous; and by dint of care, in the seventeen
or eighteen years which must elapse before his little lordship
comes of age----"

"He will never come of age! He will be killed first--he is being
killed now!" interposed Lady Essington, agitatedly. "Oh, Mr.
Headland, help me! I love the boy--he is my own child's child. I
love him as I never loved anything else in all the world; and if
he were to die----Dear God! what should I do? And he is dying: I
tell you he is. And they won't let me go near him: they won't let
me have him all to myself, these two! If his cries in the night
wring my heart and I run to his nursery, one or the other of them is
always there, and never for one moment will they let me hold him in
my arms nor be with him alone."

"Hum-m-m! Cries out in the night, does he, your ladyship? What kind
of cries? Those of fright or of pain?"

"Of pain--of excruciating pain: it would wring the heart of a stone
to hear him, and, though there is never a spot of blood nor a sign of
violence, he declares that some one comes in the night and sticks
something into his neck--something which, in his baby way, he likens
to 'a long, long needle that goes yite froo my neck and sets uvver
needles prickin' and prickin' all down my arm.'"

"Hello! what's that? Let's have that again, please!" rapped out
Cleek, before he thought; then recollected himself and added
apologetically, "I beg your ladyship's pardon, but I am apt to
get a little excited at times. Something like a needle being run
into his neck, eh? And other needles continuing the sensation down
the arm? Hum-m-m! Had a doctor called in?"

"No. I wished to, but neither the uncle nor aunt would let me do
so. They say it is nothing--a mere 'growing pain' which he will
overcome in time. But it is not--I _know_ it is not! If it were
natural, why did it never manifest itself before the failure of
that wretched diamond company? Why did it wait to begin until after
the Honourable Felix Carruthers had lost his money? And why is it
going on, night after night, ever since? Why has he begun to fail
in health?--to change from a happy, laughing, healthy child into
a peevish, fretful, constantly complaining one? I tell you they
are killing him, those two; I tell you they are using some secret
diabolical thing which is sapping his very life; and if----"

She stopped and sucked her breath in with a little gasp of fright,
and, whisking