RISING CLOUDS.
"Flora, my love, has anything occurred to distress you?" said the baronet, as he entered the breakfast room one morning in his embroidered dressing-gown and slippers, with the newspaper in his hand.
"Flora, my love, has anything occurred to distress you?" said the baronet.
Flora looked anxious and unhappy, her eye rested upon an open letter which she had received by the early post.
"I have heard from Mr. Ward, dearest," she replied; "he gives me tidings which have made me very uneasy. Scarlet fever, of a malignant kind, has been raging lately in Wingsdale, and I grieve to say that two of my brother's children are ill with it now, and it is feared that the baby is sickening."
The baronet coughed slightly, stirred the fire, and sat down to sip his chocolate.
"My poor mother!" faltered Flora; "Mr. Ward writes that she is far from strong; the nursing will be so heavy upon her."
"Have not the children a mother?" said Sir Amery, abruptly.
"Emma has taken such alarm at the idea of infection, that she has actually hurried away, and engaged a room at a hotel in a town about ten miles distant from Wingsdale!"