rlie's room close by."

"Then he is really ill?" said Julius.

"He nearly fainted after walking over to Sirenwood in vain. I don't
understand it. There's something very wrong there, which seems
perfectly to have crushed him."

"I'll go up and see him," said Julius. "You both of you look as if
you ought to be in bed. How is Cecil, Raymond?"

"Quite knocked up," he sleepily answered. "Here's Susan, mother."

Susan must have been waiting till she heard voices to carry off her
mistress. Raymond pushed her chair into her room, bent over her
with extra tenderness, bade her good night; and when Julius had done
the same they stood by the drawing-room fire together.

"I've been trying to write that letter, Julius," said Raymond, "but
I never was so sleepy in my life, and I can't get on with it."

"What letter?"

"That letter. About the races."

"Oh! That seems long ago!"

"So it does," said Raymond, in the same dreamy manner, as if trying
to shake something off. "Some years, isn't it? I wanted it done,
somehow. I would sit down to it now, only I have fallen asleep a
dozen times over it already."

"Not very good for composition," said Julius, alarmed by something
indefinable in his brother's look, and by his manner of insisting on
what was by no means urgent. "Come, put it out of your head, and go
to bed."

"How did you find the boy Terry?" asked Raymond, again as if in his
sleep.

"I scarcely saw him. He was asleep."

"And Worth calls it--?"

"The same fever as in Water Lane."

"I thought so. We are in for it," said Raymond, now quite awake.
"He did not choose to say so to my mother, but I gathered it from
his orders."

"But Frank only came down yesterday."

"Frank was knocked down and predisposed by the treatment he met
with, poor boy. They say he drank quarts of iced things at the
dinner and ball, and ate nothing. This may be only the effect of
the shock, but his head is burning, and there is a disposition to
wander. However, he has had his coup de grace, and that may account
for it. It is Cecil."

"Cecil!"

"Cecil, poor child. She has been constantly in that pestiferous
place. All Worth would say was that she must be kept quiet and
cool, but he has sent the same draughts for all three. I saw, for
Terry's came here. I fancy Worth spoke out plainly to that maid of
Cecil's, Grindstone; but she only looks bitter at me, says she can
attend to her mistress, and has kept me out of t