After a hurried walk, Marion reached home in some trepidation, lest she might be too late to dress for dinner, an offence which Sir Patrick always visited with his utmost indignation; but on entering the house, she was alarmed and surprised to hear, from the butler, that Agnes had been seized with sudden illness very soon after her return from Lady Towercliffe's ball, and that she was unable to leave her bed.
Marion flew, rather than walked up stairs, and entered her sister's room with the most affectionate solicitude, but great was her astonishment to find Agnes stretched almost insensible on the bed, and evidently in an agony of suffering, pale, cold, and languid. Her spirits were evidently in the lowest depression, and, for the first time in her life, she seemed to consider herself a mere mortal like other people.
Dixon, in the mean time, watched over the invalid with an air of excessive, almost exaggerated solicitude, emitting a series of very ostentatious sighs, while she kept her place close beside the bed, so as to exclude every one else, and made eager signs to Marion when she entered, to leave the room without speaking, and not approach her sister, or agitate her in any way.
Without heeding any such signals, however, Marion approached the bed-side with noiseless steps, and quietly assuming the place which had been occupied by Dixon, gently took hold of Agnes' hand, which felt so cold and clammy, that she started with a degree of alarm, greatly increased by the sight of the invalid's altered aspect.
"Have you called in a doctor?" said she, anxiously. "Surely Patrick does not know how very ill you are, Agnes?"
"Dixon says he thought nothing of it, and recommended me to put off my illness till after the assembly: unfeeling wretch! when I shall perhaps never recover. Since then he is gone hunting," added Agnes, with a peevish look at Marion, as if it were her fault, "and he will not return home before night!"
"Who said Patrick had gone out hunting? It is not the case. I met him in the passage, and he had been told you complained only of a slight nervous headache!" said Marion, glancing at Dixon, whose countenance wore an expression so sinister and peculiar, that Marion felt the color rush to her face with surprise, but turned away instantly to conceal how much she had been startled by it, though determined privately to watch Dixon's face more narrowly than before, while feeling a vague apprehension of she knew not what.
"Miss Dunbar must be kept quiet," observed Dixon, in a harsh sulky voice, "she ought not to speak. It only fatigues her, and she should see no one!"
"Who ordered that?" asked Marion with a scrutinizing look at the abigail's averted face. "I shall remain here, Dixon, therefore leave the room yourself at present."
While she angrily and slowly prepared to obey this authoritative command, Agnes turned her pallid face towards Marion, saying, in a faint voice, and with a look of extreme lassitude,