ed May: "You have caught
cold! You have caught a chill!"

"Perhaps I have," said May, and her knees knocked against each other.

"You have, my dear," said Lady Dashwood; and as she pronounced this
verdict, she rose from her chair with great suddenness. There was on her
face no anxiety, not a trace of it, but a certain great content. But as
she rose she became aware that her head ached and she felt a little
dizzy. What matter!

"I may have got just the slightest chill," said May, rising too, "but if
so, it's nothing!"

"Most people like having chills, and that's why they never take any
precautions, and refuse all remedies," said Lady Dashwood, making her
way to the door with care, and speaking more slowly and deliberately;
"but I know you're not like that, and I'm going to give you an
infallible cure and preventive. It'll put you right, I promise. Come
along, dear child. I ought to have known you had a chill. I ought to
have seen it written on your brow 'Chill' when you came in; but I've
been too much excited by events to see anything. I've been chattering
like a silly goose. Come upstairs, I'm going to dose you."

And May submitted, and the two women went out of the drawing-room
together up the two or three steps and into the corridor. They walked
together, both making a harmless, pathetic pretence: the one to think
the other had a chill, the other to own that a chill it was, indeed,
though not a bad chill!

What was Gwendolen doing now? Was she crying? "Poor thing, poor little
neglected thing!" thought Lady Dashwood.

"Marian can be very high-handed," she whispered to May. "I have known
her do many arbitrary things. She would be quite capable of---- But
what's the good! Poor Gwen! I couldn't pity her before, I felt too hard.
But now Jim is safe I can think reasonably. I'm sorry for her. But," she
added, "I'm not sorry for Belinda."

Now that they had reached May's room, May declared that she was not as
sure as she had been that she had got a chill.

But the chill could not be dropped like that. Lady Dashwood felt the
impropriety of suddenly giving up the chill, and she left the room and
went to search for the infallible cure and preventive. As she did so she
began to wonder why she could not will to have no headache. She was so
happy that a headache was ridiculous.

When she returned, May was in her dressing-gown and was moving about
with decision, and her limbs no longer trembled.

"I don't pity Belinda,