dying, he is sleeping," she said.
"And I think, miss, you're right. He has taken a turn for the better,"
said the experienced woman from the hospital. "Don't move, my lady,
don't move; we'll prop you with cushions--we'll pull him through still,
please God," the nurse said, with a few genuine tears.

When the doctor came some time after, instead of watching the child's
last moments, he had only to confirm their certainty of this favourable
change, and give his sanction to it; and the cloud that had seemed to
hang over it all day lifted from the house. The servants began to move
about again and bustle. The lamps were lighted. The household resumed
their occupations, and Williams himself in token of sympathy carried up
Mr. Randolph's beef-tea. When Lucy, after a long interval, was liberated
from her confined attitude and the child restored to his bed, the
improvement was so evident that she allowed herself to be persuaded to
lie down and rest. "Milady," said Bice, "I am not good for anything,
but I love him. I will not interfere, but neither will I ever take away
my eyes from him till you are again here." There was no use in this, but
it was something to the young mother. She lay down and slept, for the
first time since the illness began; slept not in broken, painful
dozings, but a real sleep. She was not in a condition to think; but
there was a vague feeling in her mind that here was some one, not as
others were, to whom little Tom was something more than to the rest.
Consciously she ought to have shrunk from Bice's presence; unconsciously
it soothed her and warmed her heart.

Sir Tom went back to his room, shaken as with a long illness, but
feeling that the world had begun again, and life was once more liveable.
He sat down and thought over every incident, and thanked God with such
tears as men too, like women, are often fain to indulge in, though they
do it chiefly in private. Then, as the effect of this great crisis began
to go off a little, and the common round to come back, there recurred to
his mind Lucy's strange speech, "You have others----" What others was he
supposed to have? She had drawn herself away from him. She had made no
appeal to his sympathy. "You have--others. I have nothing but him." What
did Lucy mean? And then he remembered how little intercourse there had
been of late between them, how she had kept aloof from him. They might
have been separated and living in different houses for all the union
the