too bad
of her, when she knew how he hated both the sound of poking, and that
horrible red flickering light which always hurt his eyes. This dislike,
which had been one of the symptoms of the early part of his illness, so
alarmed her that she had thoughts of going to call Aunt Geoffrey, and
was heartily glad to see her enter the room.

"Well, how are you going on?" she said, cheerfully. "Why, my dear, how
hot you must be in that habit!"

"Rather," said poor Henrietta, whose face, between the heat and her
perplexity, was almost crimson. "We have been reading 'Nicolo,' and I
am very much afraid it is as bad as Alex's visit, and has excited Fred
again."

"I am quite sick of hearing that word excitement!" said Fred,
impatiently.

"Almost as tired as of having your pulse felt," said Aunt Geoffrey. "But
yet I must ask you to submit to that disagreeable necessity."

Fred moved pettishly, but as he could not refuse, he only told Henrietta
that he could not bear any one to look at him while his pulse was felt.

"Will you fetch me a candle, my dear?" said Aunt Geoffrey, amazed as
well as terrified by the fearful rapidity of the throbs, and trying to
acquire sufficient composure to count them calmly. The light came, and
still she held his wrist, beginning her reckoning again and again, in
the hope that it was only some momentary agitation that had so quickened
them.

"What! 'tis faster?" asked Fred, speaking in a hasty alarmed tone, when
she released him at last.

"You are flushed, Fred," she answered very quietly, though she felt
full of consternation. "Yes, faster than it ought to be; I think you had
better not sit up any longer this evening, or you will sleep no better
than last night."

"Very well," said Fred.

"Then I will ring for Stephens," said she.

The first thing she did on leaving his room was to go to her own, and
there write a note to young Mr. Carey, giving an account of the symptoms
that had caused her so much alarm. As she wrote them down without
exaggeration, and trying to give each its just weight, going back to
recollect the first unfavourable sign, she suddenly remembered that as
she left her sister's room, she had seen Mrs. Langford, whom she had
left with Fred, at the door of the store-closet. Could she have been
giving him any of her favourite nourishing things? Mrs. Geoffrey
Langford could hardly believe that either party could have acted so
foolishly, yet when she remembered a few words th