gan to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothing
more to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened a
furtive crack--then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk about
Maurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken home
the next day--at which the dining-room door opened broadly, and Mrs.
Newbolt said:

"If you ask _me_, I'd say 'no'! If you want to know what I think, I
think she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of this
house till it's normal."

"Mrs. Newbolt," said Maurice, pausing in his tramping up and down the
room; "why did Eleanor go out to Medfield?"

"Perhaps she was lookin' for a cook! I--I think I'll go to bed!" said
Mrs. Newbolt--and almost ran out of the room.

Maurice looked down at Mrs. Houghton, and laughed, grimly: "You might as
well tell me?"

"My dear fellow, we have nothing to tell! We don't know anything--except
that Eleanor has added to her cold, and is very nervous," She paused;
could she give him an idea of the extent of Eleanor's "nervousness," and
yet not tell him what they all felt sure of? "Why, Maurice," she said;
"just to show you how hysterical Eleanor is, she told me--" Mrs.
Houghton dropped her voice, and looked toward the dining-room door; but
Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said--Oh,
Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanor
loves you. She implied that she didn't want to get well, so that you
could--could get the little boy, by marrying his mother!"

Maurice sat down and stared at her, open-mouthed. "_Marry?_ I, marry
Lily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; then
he said, very softly, "Good God."

Mrs. Houghton nodded. "Her one thought," she said (praying that, without
breaking her word to Eleanor, and betraying what was so terribly
Eleanor's own affair, she might make Maurice's heart so ready for the
pathos that he would not be repelled by the folly), "her one desire is
that you should have your little boy."

Maurice walked over to the fireplace and kicked two charred pieces of
wood together between the fire irons. In the crash of Mary Houghton's
calm words, the rhythm of the wheels was permanently silenced.

It was about four o'clock the next morning that the change came: Eleanor
had a violent chill.

"I thought we were out of the woods," the doctor said, frowning; "but I
guess I was too previous. There's a spot in the left lung