“Cousin St. Quentin,” Sydney said, coming straight into the library, “I want to tell you that I saw and spoke to Hugh to-day. You must forgive me, please, this time—I won’t again.”
Her cousin looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes: at another time she would have been surprised to see no anger there at her confession, but now she did not seem to be surprised at anything. Pauly was very ill—perhaps going to die—and Hugh had not cared to see her. Nothing else seemed to matter very much.
“Are you ill, Sydney?” Her cousin spoke to her twice before she heard him.
She put her hands to her head. “I don’t know; my head aches rather.”
“Go and lie down,” said St. Quentin. “You’ve been worrying about that poor little
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 chap at the Vicarage. Lie down till luncheon; then you will feel better.”
She felt dimly that his tone was kind in spite of her disobedience with regard to Hugh. With a sudden impulse she knelt down beside his couch and laid her head upon his hand. “I shall not disobey you again,” she said, “for Hugh—Hugh doesn’t care, I think, to see me now.”
She was on her feet again, and had left the room before he had time to answer her.
St. Quentin gazed after her with a softened look in his tired grey eyes. “Poor little soul!” he muttered.
Dr. Lorry looked in at the Castle as Lady Frederica and Miss Osric were sitting down to luncheon. Sydney had fallen asleep on the sofa in the morning-room, and Miss Osric would not rouse her. The old doctor refused luncheon and went to the library at once. His face was very grave.
“Is the little chap at the Vicarage any worse?” St. Quentin asked him sharply.
“Very little change since yesterday,” the old doctor said. “I have great hopes from young Chichester, and fresh treatment.... These young men, you know, are up in all the latest developments of science.”
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“What does he think of the fever?”
“Badly, I’m afraid. Now the school is closed he wants it turned into a hospital, and to borrow nurses from Donisbro’, to work with the more effective women here. He thinks the patients will have very little chance of recovery in their own cottages.”
The marquess winced, then reached his desk and pen. “How much money will you want to start with?” he said. “I am, of course, accountable for all this. Save what lives you can, and never mind my pocket.”
There was no time for mincing matters. The doctor told him what would be required, and St. Quentin drew a cheque for the amount and signed it.
“Let me know when more is wanted,” he said. “And now will you go upstairs and look at Sydney. I think she needs change. If you agree, Lady Frederica shall take her off to the South of France somewhere to set her up after all this.”
Dr. Lorry made no comment upon this suggestion, but went quietly upstairs to Sydney. She was awake now, looking rather better for her sleep and eating a basin of soup, which Miss Osric had brought her.
Dr. Lorry sat down beside her on the sofa,
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 felt her pulse, looked into her eyes, and asked if she would like to go to bed.
“I think you would be more comfortable there,” he said, and Sydney did not contradict him.
“Well?” asked St. Quentin anxiously, as Dr. Lorry re-entered the brown library a few minutes later. “How about the South of France—or do you think sea air would be better for her?”
“I shouldn’t recommend you to consider the idea of change quite at once,” the old doctor observed cautiously. “You see, Miss Lisle has been a good deal about among the cottages, and——”
“All the more reason for her needing change!”
“Yes—yes; but that cottage where she held her meeting for the women was, I regret to say, in a most unhealthy condition, owing to defective drains, and——”
“I know; it was one I had marked to be pulled down!”
“Miss Lisle was in it for two hours twice a week, and oftener when that poor woman first fell ill,” the doctor persisted, as though his keen old eyes failed to see that the subject of the neglected cottages was a very sore
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 one to their owner. He hated himself, as he saw how the thin face flushed beneath his words, but something had to be said, and he said it.
“So I should not recommend your worrying over sending Miss Lisle away from home at present.”
“What do you mean?” St. Quentin had turned upon him like a flash and caught his hand as in a vice. “What is it? Don’t say the child is ill! Good heavens! not the fever!”
“Remember, she will have every possible advantage,” the old doctor faltered, “every chance that anybody could have of complete recovery. There is no need to be at all despondent, but I fear—don’t agitate yourself—I fear we must not deceive ourselves into the belief that she is going to escape the fever.”

Ten long days had gone by—the longest, Mr. Fenton thought, that he had ever known.
He had come straight down to the Castle on hearing of Sydney’s illness, to do what he could for Lord St. Quentin, under this fresh calamity which had fallen on what really seemed a doomed house.
He sat with the marquess in the library,
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 except when, morning and evening, he walked down to the improvised hospital to get the latest news of the battle raging there.
Sometimes it was Dr. Lorry, with the trimness gone from his person and his eyes a little bloodshot, who would come out and report to the lawyer waiting there in the deserted play-ground. Sometimes Hugh’s tall form and young haggard face would emerge from the school-door; or sometimes Miss Morrell, who had come from Donisbro’ when the doctors were at their wits’ end to find sufficient and efficient nurses, and had stayed ever since, toiling with the rest to save the many sick.
Or sometimes it was the Vicar, striding between the Vicarage and the hospital, who would stay to deliver his report upon the fight which he was sharing with the doctors and the nurses.
And Mr. Fenton would go back to Lord St. Quentin, lying staring dumbly at the fire, and thinking—thinking of that Christmas Day, when the girl who lay upstairs in the grip of fever had asked him if he could do nothing for the cottages. If he had only done it then, when she had asked him, what anxiety and distress would have been obviated!
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“They are saving so many,” Mr. Fenton would say, “and that young Chichester is invaluable. Dr. Lorry cannot say enough for him. They are saving so many, that one cannot help feeling very hopeful for Miss Lisle.”
“I have no hope,” said St. Quentin.
A specialist from London had come to see the girl on whom so many hopes were centred.
“She is very seriously ill,” had been his verdict—that verdict which seemed so terribly unsatisfying. “A great deal depends upon the nursing. There is no need to give up hope.”
Then he had gone away, leaving those who loved the girl to make what they could out of those brief sentences.
“She is very seriously ill.”
“A great deal depends upon the nursing.”
“There is no need to give up hope.”
“She would have made a better job of the landlord business than I’ve done!” St. Quentin said to Mr. Fenton, again and again. “She cared for the people, and when I wouldn’t do my duty, tried to do it for me!”
“Th............