or fellow, how
headstrong he is! I am grieved to tell you that he was taken ill
this morning; I sadly fear that it is this wretched low fever that
is so much about. It makes me _miserable_ to leave him! If I
consulted my own wishes, I need not tell _you_ that I should stay
and nurse him; but alas! I know by experience the sharpness of the
world's tongue, and in my situation I dare not brave it; nor would
it be fair upon Mr. Huntley that I should. Ah! what a different
world it would be if one might follow one's own impulses! but one
may not, and so I am leaving at once. I shall be gone before this
reaches you."

I throw the letter down on the floor with a gesture of raging disgust.

"Gone!" I say, with flashing eyes and lifted voice; "is it possible
that, after having decoyed him there, she is leaving him now to die,
_alone_?"

"So it seems," he answers, looking back at me with an indignation hardly
inferior to my own. "I could not have believed it of her."

"He will die!" I say a moment after, forgetting Mrs. Huntley, and
breaking into a storm of tears. "I _know_ he will! I always said we were
too prosperous. Nothing has ever happened to us. None of us have ever
gone! I _know_ he will die; and I said yesterday that I liked him the
least of all the boys. Oh, I _wish_ I had not said it.--Barbara!
Barbara! I _wish_ I had not said it."

For Barbara has entered, and is standing silently listening. The roses
in her cheeks have paled, indeed, and her blue eyes look large and
frightened; but, unlike me, she makes no crying fuss. With noiseless
dispatch she arranges every thing for our departure. Neither will she
hear of Algy's dying. He will get better. We will go to him at once--all
three of us--and will nurse him so well that he will soon be himself
again; and whatever happens (with a kindling of the eye, and godly
lightening of all her gentle face), is not _God_ here--God _our friend_?
This is what she keeps saying to me in a soft and comforting whisper
during our short transit, with her slight arm thrown round me as I sob
in helpless wretchedness on her shoulder. It is very foolish, very
childish of me, but I cannot get it out of my head, that I said I liked
him the least. It haunts me still when I stand by his bedside, when I
see his poor cheeks redder than mine were when they wore their rouge,
when I notice the hot drought of his parched lips. It haunts me still
with