oman, and to be trusted about an excitable
patient. Mind, I object to any female servant entering Mrs. Staines's
room with gossip. Keep them outside the door for the present, please.
Oh, and nurse, if anything should happen, likely to grieve or to worry
her, it must be kept from her entirely: can I trust you?"

"You may, sir."

"I shall add ten guineas to your fee, if she gets through the month
without a shock or disturbance of any kind."

She stared at him, inquiringly. Then she said,--

"You may rely on me, doctor."

"I feel I may. Still, she alarms me. She looks quiet enough, but she is
very excitable."

Not all these precautions gave Dr. Philip any real sense of security;
still less did they to Mr. Lusignan. He was not a tender father, in
small things, but the idea of actual danger to his only child was
terrible to him and he now passed his life in a continual tremble.

This is the less to be wondered at, when I tell you that even the stout
Philip began to lose his nerve, his appetite, his sleep, under this
hourly terror and this hourly torture.

Well did the great imagination of antiquity feign a torment, too great
for the mind long to endure, in the sword of Damocles suspended by
a single hair over his head. Here the sword hung over an innocent
creature, who smiled beneath it, fearless; but these two old men must
sit and watch the sword, and ask themselves how long before that subtle
salvation shall snap.

"Ill news travels fast," says the proverb. "The birds of the air shall
carry the matter," says Holy Writ; and it is so. No bolts nor bars, no
promises nor precautions, can long shut out a great calamity from the
ears it is to blast, the heart it is to wither. The very air seems full
of it, until it falls.

Rosa's child was more than a fortnight old; and she was looking more
beautiful than ever, as is often the case with a very young mother, and
Dr. Philip complimented her on her looks. "Now," said he, "you reap the
advantage of being good, and obedient, and keeping quiet. In another ten
days or so, I may take you to the seaside for a week. I have the honor
to inform you that from about the fourth to the tenth of March there is
always a week of fine weather, which takes everybody by surprise, except
me. It does not astonish me, because I observe it is invariable. Now,
what would you say if I gave you a week at Herne Bay, to set you up
altogether?"

"As you please, dear uncle," said Mrs. Staines, wit