e had finished what
he had to say; but he listened attentively, and gave no sign that this
was so.

"She will die," said Blundell, "if this goes on;" and he neither
mentioned any name, nor did John Crewys require him to do so.

The doctor's words came hurrying out incoherently from the depths of
his anxiety and earnestness.

"She will die if this goes on. There were few hopes and little enough
pleasure in her life before; but what is left to her now? _De mortuis
nil nisi bonum._ But just picture to yourself for a moment, man, what
her life has been."

He stopped and drew breath, and strove to speak calmly and
dispassionately.

"I was born in the valley of the Youle," he said. "My people live in
a cottage--they call it a house, but it's just a farm--on the
river,--Cullacott. I was a raw medical student when _she_ came here as
a child. Her father was killed in the Afghan War. He had quarrelled
with his uncle, they said, who afterwards succeeded to the earldom;
so she was left to the guardianship of Sir Timothy, a distant cousin.
Every one was sorry for her, because Sir Timothy was her guardian, and
because she was a little young thing to be left to the tender mercies
of the two old ladies, who were old even then. If you will excuse my
speaking frankly about the family"--John nodded--"they bullied their
brother always; what with their superiority of birth, and his being so
much younger, and so on. Their bringing-up made him what he was, I am
sure. He went nowhere; he always fancied people were laughing at him.
His feeling about his--his mother's lowly origin seemed to pervade
his whole life. He exaggerated the importance of birth till it became
almost a mania. If you hadn't known the man, you couldn't have
believed a human being--one of the million crawling units on the
earth--could be so absurdly inflated with self-importance. It was
pitiful. He went nowhere, and saw no one. I believe he thought that
Providence had sent a wife of high rank to his very door to enable him
partially to wipe out his reproach. She looked like a child when she
came, but she shot up very suddenly into womanhood. If you ask me if
she was unhappy, I declare I don't think so. She had never realized,
I should think, what it was to be snubbed or found fault with in
her life. She was a motherless child, and had lived with her old
grandfather and her young father, and had been very much spoilt. And
they were both snatched away from her, as it we