r room, when Mrs. Fane-Smith
met her. She was preoccupied with her own anxieties, or Erica's
exhaustion could not have escaped her notice.

"I am really quite unhappy about Rose!" she exclaimed. "We must send
for Doctor L----. Her cough seems so much worse, I fear it will turn to
bronchitis. Are you learned in such things?"

"I helped to nurse Tom through a bad attack once," said Erica.

"Oh! Then come and see her," said Mrs. Fane-Smith.

Erica went without a word. She would not have liked Mrs. Fane-Smith's
fussing, but yet the sight of her care for Rose made her feel more
achingly conscious of the blank in her own life that blank which nothing
could ever fill. She wanted her own mother so terribly, and just now
Mrs. Fane-Smith had touched the old wound roughly.

Rose seemed remarkably cheerful, and not nearly so much invalided as her
mother thought.

"Mamma always thinks I am going to die if I'm at all out of sorts," she
remarked, when Mrs. Fane-Smith had left the room to write to the doctor.
"I believe you want doctoring much more than I do. What is the matter?
You are as white as a sheet!"

"I am tired and rather worried, and my back is troublesome," said Erica.

"Then you'll just lie down on my sofa," said Rose, peremptorily. "If you
don't, I shall get out of bed and make you."

Erica did not require much compulsion for every inch of her seemed to
have a separate ache, and she was still all quivering and tingling with
the indignant anger stirred up by her interview with Mr. Fane-Smith. She
let Rose chatter away and tried hard to school herself into calmness.
By and by her efforts were rewarded; she not only grew calm, but fell
asleep, and slept like any baby till the gong sounded for luncheon.

Luncheon proved a very silent meal; it was, if possible, more trying
that breakfast had been. Mrs. Fane-Smith had heard all about the
interview from her husband, and they were both perplexed and disturbed.
Erica felt uncertain of her footing with them, and could only wait for
them to make the first move. But the grim silence tickled her fancy.

"Really," she thought to herself, "we might be so many horses munching
away at mangers, for all we have said to each other."

But in spite of it she did not feel inclined to make conversation.

Later on she went for a drive with her aunt; the air revived her,
and she began to feel more like herself again. They went out into the
country, but on the way home Mrs. Fane-Smith