other ever stayed upstairs.

Every evening, therefore, he could not rest until Lady Kingsmead had
gone "to dress."

Brigit had never known how much the little fellow noticed the details
of dress, and so on, but now she learned, for his remarks about his
mother usually took the form of appreciation or dislike of some
particular toilette.

"Wear pink, mother--it suits you best--and pearls. The diamonds make you
look older."

Poor Lady Kingsmead, more lovable in her distress than her daughter had
ever seen her, obeyed him humbly, and promising to wear pink, or
whatever the colour might be, crept away to her bedroom and cried until
she was scarcely recognisable.

Two days passed thus, the doctor coming many times and shaking his head
doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much
better--the danger from that is quite past; but--the fever does not go
down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young
to have had a mental shock, so I can only assume that the too great
activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has been
studying very hard?"

This Brigit denied, but the doctor, on insisting, was told to interview
Mr. Babington, and to the girl's amazement she learned that only a day
or two before he was taken ill Tommy had betrayed the fact that for
weeks he had been in the habit of spending part of each night in the
disused chapel, practising on his violin.

"He is quite mad about his music," the young man mourned. "I never could
get him to take the least interest in anything else, and as he always
worked as little as possible for me, I could not understand his looking
so tired, until, finding that he had heard the stable clock strike four,
and knowing that one cannot hear the clock from his room, I pinned him
down and he told me."

Brigit's eyes filled with tears.

The chapel, disused for many years, had evolved into a sort of
lumber-room, and she could see, in her imagination, the pathetic picture
of her little brother fiddling away among the piled-up boxes and old
furniture, trying to hasten the moment when his beloved master would
find him worthy of personal instruction.

It was all clear to his sister. Left alone, the child's whole
strength--far more strength than he should have been allowed to
expend--had gone to his passion for his violin, and now, unless a change
for the better should come very soon, he must die, burnt with fever. And
the fault would