touch her, and the unreasoning terror of a thoroughly healthy
person for the suffering which could.

"But there is nothing to frighten you in that," said Christopher, in his
most comforting tone; "France is such a beastly dirty hole that they are
bound to have diseases going on there, such as could never trouble
clean, local-boarded, old England. And then it's so far away, too. I'd
never worry about that, if I were you."

"Wouldn't you?" Elisabeth was at war with him, but she was not
insensible to the consolation he never failed to afford her when things
went wrong.

"Good gracious, no! England is so well looked after, with county
councils and such, that even if an epidemic came here they'd stamp it
out like one o'clock. Don't frighten yourself with bogeys, Elisabeth,
there's a good girl!"

"I feel just the same about newspapers now that I used to feel about
Lalla Rookh," said Elisabeth confidentially.

Christopher was puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't see quite the connection,
but I have no doubt it is there, like Mrs. Wilfer's petticoat."

"In Cousin Maria's copy of Lalla Rookh there is a most awful picture of
the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan; and when I was little I went nearly mad
with terror of that picture. I used to go and look at it when nobody was
about, and it frightened me more and more every time."

"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it?"

"I don't know. I felt I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds, but must keep
it a ghastly secret. Sometimes I used to hide the book, and try to
forget where I'd hidden it. But I never could forget, and in the end I
always went and found it, and peeped at the picture and nearly died of
terror. The mere outside of the book had a horrible fascination for me.
I used to look at it all the time I was in the drawing-room, and then
pretend I wasn't looking at it; yet if the housemaid had moved it an
inch in dusting the table where it lay, I always knew."

"Poor little silly child! If only you'd have told me, I'd have asked
Miss Farringdon to put it away where you couldn't get at it."

"But I couldn't have told you, Chris--I couldn't have told anybody.
There seemed to be some terrible bond between that dreadful book and me
which I was bound to keep secret. Of course it doesn't frighten me any
longer, though I shall always hate it; but the newspapers frighten me
just in the same way when there are horrible things in them."

"Why, Betty, I am ashamed of you! And such a clever g