When the ladies got back to the Dower House, Letitia’s letter was awaiting them. Agnes had not known what to say on the way. She had maintained the little fiction of the headache, with which Mary sympathized tenderly, and lay back in the corner of the carriage wondering what she should, what she could do. Endure for this night, at least, that expedient which is always the nearest to a woman, and in the morning on some pretence, with some excuse which did not yet occur to her, go in her own person and see for herself. This was all that Agnes could decide upon. And when she reached home Letitia’s letter was the first thing that met her eye. She devoured it, standing in the hall, while Mary went in. A letter which carries a sentence of death may look as little important as a letter which conveys an invitation to tea, and Mary made no inquiries. That she should pass tranquilly through the hall and go into the drawing-room, while Agnes was reading of her only child’s illness, struck her sister as a hideous cruelty and want of heart. She had said to herself she would disturb Mary no more, she would not attempt to awaken the feeling which had lain so long dormant, which surely was now beyond hope. But it was as a bitter offence and wrong to Agnes when Lady Frogmore went past her with a cheerful word to the maid who came to take her shawl, and a mind entirely at ease while Mar’s fate was being sealed. For Letitia’s letter left very little doubt as to the boy’s fate. “I will let you know if anything happens. That is—” Agnes said to herself, with a gasp of anguish, “if he dies.” Oh heaven! and he might be dying now alone with the trained nurses, nobody near him who loved him! Alas, poor Mar! who was there in the world who loved him? except, perhaps, herself, who had been the only mother his infancy had known, and she was useless to him, unable to do anything for him!

It was a long time before Agnes could face the light and her sister’s tranquil looks. She went to her room and fell on her knees and prayed with that passionate remonstrance and appeal, and almost reproach, with which we fly to God when He seems about to cut off from us the thing we hold most dear—pleading, putting forth every argument, reasoning with the Supreme Disposer of events, arguing and explaining to Him how it could not, must not be—as we all do, when prayer, which is so often a mere formality, becomes the outcry of mortal disquietude. The tears which she shed, the struggle which she went through, exhausted her so, that for the moment her misery was weakened with her strength. Mary, waiting tranquilly for her downstairs, believed that Agnes had lain down a little, her head being so bad, and approved it as the wisest thing to do. “Don’t disturb Miss Hill, she has a bad headache,” she said. And so Agnes was left alone to have her struggle out.

“Are you better, dear?” said Mary, in her quiet voice, when her sister came in, in the twilight, just before dinner. Agnes had changed her dress as usual, and in the dim light it was impossible to see how pale she was, and the signs of trouble in her face.

“I have news from Letitia,” said Agnes, “bad news—they have illness at the Park. I think I will go to-morrow, if you can spare me, Mary, and see for myself.”

“At the Park?” Lady Frogmore paused with nervous questions on her lips—Was it Duke? Was it anything infectious? Was it——? She paused, and instinct taught her that her sister’s desire to go and see for herself could mean only one thing. The boy—— She never to herself called him anything but the boy, and never thought of him—which she did seldom and unwillingly, never when she could help it—without a strange tremor and sinking at her heart.

“Is it——?” she said, but she could not put even that formula or ask, is it he? “Is it—serious?” she added in a very low voice.

“I think she thinks he is dying—and she wants no one to come—he has two nurses—and she says she will write if anything happens. If anything happens! Oh, my God, my boy! with no one near him that cares for him. I must go to-morrow, Mary.”

Lady Frogmore patted her sister’s shoulder with her hand. Her own child! and yet it was for Agnes that she felt—for her great trouble. “Yes,” she said, “you must go,” with a strange piteous tone which her sister did not understand, and indeed in the throng of her own emotions did not perceive.

“She never says a word of sorrow or regret. She is glad, that dreadful woman! Now,” cried Agnes, “it will be all hers, she thinks—there will be no one in her way.”

“In her way!” Mary said like an echo. They could not see each other’s faces. “Ah, that was always what I wished,” she said in a subdued tone.

Agnes seized her sister by the shoulders with a grasp which was almost fierce. “You shall not now,” she cried, “you shall not now! you shall think of him for once—not Letitia, but good Frogmore’s son—dear Frogmore’s son. Oh, my boy, my boy!”

She let her sister go, and fell back covering her face with her hands. And Mary sank trembling into her chair. But she made no remonstrance or reply. She did not say anything but cried a little quietly under the cover of the evening. She was moved, if with nothing else, at least with the profound emotion of her companion. That Agnes should calm herself after this outburst and beg Mary’s pardon humbly, and do all that in her lay to appear cheerful for the rest of the evening, it is almost unnecessary to say. She was filled with compunction and tenderness towards the unfortunate mother who knew nothing of maternity. Why should she try to excite and arouse Mary now? Arouse her only to bereavement, to know the misery of loss? Oh, no, no! Agnes said to herself. If he must die, let not the light of life go out for Mary too; it was enough that, for herself, that bitter anguish must be.

She started very early in the morning, and arrived at the Park while still it was high day. Letitia was out. Mrs. Parke had given up her feverish watch since that day when the doctor had bidden her write to the boy’s mother. She had discovered that her health was suffering from confinement, and that a little air and change of scene was necessary, as there was really no need for her and she could do nothing for Mar. She drove about with an eager eye upon the property, observing and deciding what must be done, when all was over, when everything was in their own hands. She went to Westgate, and planned where the new cottages were to be. “Your father has been tied down in every way,” she said to Letty; “he has not been able to carry out his own plans. But now, alas, in all probability that period is over, and he will be able to act for himself——”

“Oh, mamma, what do you mean?” Letty had cried.

“It is very easy to tell what I mean: poor Mar—though it is dreadful to think of it—it will make a wonderful difference to your father, Letty, when the poor boy is mercifully released——”

“Do you mean,” cried Letty, her eyes full of tears and horror, “when Mar, dear Mar, dies——? Is that the dreadful, dreadful thing that you mean, mamma?”

“My saying it will not make him die a moment sooner, but we must be prepared. That is what is coming, alas! However grieved we may be, that is no reason for shutting our eyes.”

“Mamma! do you think it? Do you really believe it? I know he is very ill—but there is a long way between that and—dying. Oh,” said Letty, with a shudder, “I cannot, cannot bear it. I will not think it, I will not believe it. What is the good of doctors and nurses, and of all the new things that have been found out, if Mar must die.”

Dreadful question which we have all asked! With neglect and ignorance every terrible loss is alas! possible—but with all that science and all that care can do, with doctors that discover new methods every day, and nursing that never rests, how is it that still they die? Letty had never faced this question before in her life. She sat by the side of her mother, whose mind was tuned to so different a mood, who was calculating in the fullest impulse of new life and activity what she was going to do—and sobbed out her youthful soul at the first sight of that inevitable fate that kings as well as beggars must pass and cannot escape.

Agnes got out of her humble cab from the station in the middle of the avenue, and walked the rest of the way to the house. Now that she was so near she pushed off the moment of certainty with the instinct of anxiety. The windows were all open, he was living at least, there was still hope. And even that was a relief. In the hall she found the daily bulletin placed there for inquirers. “No change; strength fairly maintained,” which gave her another shock of acute consolation, if such words can be used. “But I must see him. You know me. I am Lord Frogmore’s aunt,” she cried. “No, I cannot wait till Mrs. Parke comes in. I must see him. I must see him.” The footman called the butler, who did not know how to stop this impetuous visitor; but before he had appeared Agnes had flown upstairs, feeling a freedom in the absence of Letitia which increased the sense of relief. The nurse came to the door of Mar’s room, with her fingers to her lips, as she heard the hasty footstep. It was the cheerful nurse, the optimist, who thought that young patients recover from everything. She perceived in a moment that this was no formal inquiry, and hastened to say that the patient was “no worse.” “You may think that’s not much, but it’s a great deal,” she added, coming out into the outer room.

“Oh, nurse, God bless you! I thank you with all my heart!” cried poor Agnes, bursting out, but noiselessly, into a passion of tears.

Upon which the cheerful woman shook her head. “We must not go too fast,” she said. “He is very bad. But I have never been one that took the worst side. I’ve seen that kind before; a long, weedy slip of a boy that’s outgrown, you would say, his strength. But they’re stronger than you think for. I say, while there’s life there’s hope.”

Agnes Hill had heard these words often before, as we all have done, and looking up through her grateful tears with a fresh accÈs of misery she said, “Is that all? Oh, is that all?”

“The doctor gives him the six weeks,” said the nurse, pursuing her own line of thought, “but I shouldn’t be surprised if there was a change to-morrow or next day. That will be five weeks. I can’t tell you why I think it, but one can’t be so long with a case without forming an opinion. To-morrow night or early on Thursday morning I shouldn’t wonder if the change came.”

“Oh, nurse, the change!” said Agnes, clasping her hands, with the full sense of the words flashing on her mind.

“Yes,” said the nurse. “I can’t say, and no one can say, what change it will be—but I believe the fever will go. And then—it all depends upon his strength,” she added, “and I take the cheerful view.”

“You think there is still hope?” said Agnes, taking the woman’s hand in hers.

“Oh, plenty of hope!” said the optimist. But when the anxious visitor was allowed to come within the door, and from that corner saw Mar lying in the doze in which he spent most of his time, her heart sank within her. Nothing could look more feeble, more like death, as if he were gone already, than the waxen face of the boy, with his dark eyelashes against his cheek. She turned away and put her hands to her eyes, thinking he was already gone. What did it matter what any one said? Hope died with a pang unspeakable in the anxious woman’s breast. She came away again without listening to the further words of comfort which the nurse poured into her ears. Comfort—what comfort was there possible when he lay there, gone, wasted to a shadow, shrunken to nothing, with those wide circles round his eyes, and the blue veins like streaks of color? Agnes said to herself she had seen too many to deceive herself. She knew, whatever any one might say.

As she came down again to the hall, Letitia’s carriage arrived at the door. Though Agnes was so hopeless and so entirely convinced that nothing could now avail, the sound of the carriage wheels on the gravel made her shrink and glow with indignation, as if the noise might harm him. The first words she said to Mrs. Parke were of reproach. “Couldn’t you drive round another way, not to disturb him?” she said.

“Ah, you have come to see our poor Mar. No, dear boy, we don’t disturb him. Nothing has disturbed him for a long, long time, alas!” said Letitia. The mournful motion of her head, her measured tones of fictitious grief, gave Agnes an impulse to strike her, as a brutal man might have done, upon the lying mouth.

“Oh, Aunt Agnes,” cried Letty, “stay, stay! Don’t go away.” There was no possibility of doubting the sincerity of Letty’s wet eyes and tear-stained face.

“I am afraid I cannot ask you to do that,” said Letitia. “If it had been Mary—— But there are too many people already in the house. And you could do Mar no good, Agnes; in all likelihood he will never recognize anybody—he will just sleep away. And the agitation is more than I can bear. And at such a moment it is best there should be nobody in the house but the family alone.”

“I am his mother’s sister,” said Agnes, painfully.

“But such a mother! who has never spoken to him, never acknowledged him, would have turned him out of his rights if she could. No, he must be left now to those who have cared for him all his life.”

“Oh, Letitia,” she cried, in her misery, “and have you nothing to blame yourself with in that? Is your conscience clear? Don’t you remember, as we all do—as we all did—for most of them are gone?” she cried, wringing her hands.

Letitia looked at her, opening her eyes wide, then gave her daughter a glance of appeal, and shook her head. “Poor thing!” she said. “Poor Agnes, it has been too much for her. This dreadful mental weakness is in the family. Tell one of the men, Letty, to get ready to take her to the station. My poor Agnes, rest here a little and Thomas shall take you to the train.”

Agnes said not a word more. She turned and hastened away, almost running to get into the shelter of her cab before the storm of wretchedness and fierce indignation, which she could scarcely keep silent so long, should burst forth. And now she was about to triumph in her wickedness, this cruel terrible woman! The stars in their courses fought for her. Mar’s innocent young life, and Mary’s reason, and all the misery that had been, were but steps in her advancement. And now she had all but reached the climax of her life.