ear of
sickness. Lucy was so much shocked, that she could hardly steady her
voice to chide the children for not giving a better welcome to their
brother. They would have clung round her, but she shook them off, and
sent Annora in haste for her mother's fan; while Philip arriving with a
slice of diet-bread and a cup of sack, the one fanned him, and the other
fed him with morsels of the cake soaked in the wine, till he revived,
looked up with eyes that were unchanged, and thanked them with a few
faltering words, scarcely intelligible to Lucy. The little girls came
nearer, and curiously regarded him but when he held out his hand to his
favourite Dolly, she shrank back in reluctance.

'Do not chide her,' he said wearily. 'May she never become used to such
marks!'

'What, would you have her live among cowards?' exclaimed Philip; but
Berenger, instead of answering, looked up at the front of the house,
one of those fine Tudor facades that seem all carved timber and glass
lattice, and asked, so abruptly that Lucy doubted whether she heard him
alright,--'How many windows are there in this front?'

'I never counted,' said Philip.

'I have,' said Annora; 'there are seven and thirty, besides the two
little ones in the porch.'

'None shall make them afraid,' he muttered. 'Who would dare build such a
defenceless house over yonder?'--pointing south.

'Our hearts are guarded now,' said Philip, proudly. Berenger half
smiled, as he was wont to do when he meant more than he could
conveniently utter, and presently he asked, in the same languid, musing
tone, 'Lucy, were you ever really affrighted?'

Lucy questioned whether he could be really in his right mind, as if the
bewilderment of his brain was again returning; and while she paused,
Annora exclaimed, 'Yes, when we were gathering cowslips, and the
brindled cow ran at us, and Lucy could not run because she had Dolly in
her arm. Oh! we were frightened then, till you came, brother.'

'Yes,' added Bessie; 'and last winter too, when the owl shrieked at the
window---'

'And,' added Berenger, 'sister, what was your greatest time of revelry?'

Annora again put in her word. 'I know, brother; you remember the
fair-day, when my Lady Grandame was angered because you and Lucy went on
dancing when we and all then gentry had ceased. And when Lucy said she
had not seen that you were left alone, Aunt Cecily said it was because
the eyes of discretion were lacking.'

'Oh, the Christmas feast