king in a fright, "Surely he has not been there?"

"No; I met him on the road with Lady Hester Perrault, and I told them.
I walked back to Spinney Lawn with them. But," as I began to thank
her, and her voice went lower still, "but--oh, Ursula, Lady Hester knew
it!"

"Knew it!"

"Yes, knew it quite well."

"She was doing it on purpose!"

"Oh," Emily hid her face in her hands, "I pray God to forgive me if I
am doing a very cruel wicked wrong; but I can't help thinking it. I had
told her only yesterday how bad the fever was in that street. She said
she had forgotten it, and thanked me; but she had not her own boy,
Trevor, with her."

I was too much frozen with the horror of the thing to speak at first,
and perhaps Emily thought I did not quite believe her, for she said,
under her breath, "And I've heard her talk--talk to mamma--about her
being so certain that Lord Trevorsham could not live, even when he was
past seven years old. They always have said that the first illness
would go to his head and carry him off. And when people do wish things
very much--" And then she grew frightened at herself, and began blaming
herself for the horrible fancy, but saying it haunted her every time
she saw Lord Trevorsham in Lady Hester's sight. That old ballad, "The
wee grovelling doo," would come into her head, and she had felt as if
any harm happened to the child it would be her fault for not having
spoken a word of warning, and this had determined her.

By this time I had taken it in, and then the first thing I did was to
spring up and ask how she could leave the boy still in the woman's
power, to which she answered that she had walked them back to Spinney
Lawn--a whole mile--and that Lady Hester could not set forth again, now
that Alured had heard the conversation.

He had been bent on going to buy a tame sea-gull there, as a birthday
present for Trevor; and Emily had lured him off from that, by a promise
of getting one from an old fisherman whom she knew. So there was not
much fear of his running back into the danger, though I should not have
a happy moment till he was in my sight again.

Then Emily sprang up, saying, she must go. She had walked four miles,
and she must get back as fast as she could. Most likely mamma would
think her at Spinney Lawn.

But what must not it have cost that timid thing to venture here with
her warning!

It gave me a double sense of the reality of my boy's, peril, that she
had been ex