‘Perhaps. It is just a fortnight since, and I felt a strange shudder and chill as I was talking. But it may be nothing; only keep Mite away till I have seen Trotman. My Mary, don’t look like that! It may be nothing, and we have been very happy—thank God.’
Poor Mary, in a choking state, hurried away to send for the doctor, and to despatch orders to Nurse Eden to confine Master Michael to the nursery and garden for the present, her sinking and foreboding heart forbidding her to approach the child herself.
The verdict of the doctor confirmed these alarms, for all the symptoms of scarlet fever had by that time manifested themselves. Mary had gone through the disease long before, and had nursed through more than one outbreak at Miss Lang’s, so her husband might take the comfort of knowing that there was little anxiety on her account, though the
doctor, evidently expecting a severe attack, insisted on sending in a trained nurse to assist her.
As the little boy had fortunately been in bed and asleep long before his father came home, there was as yet no danger of infection for him, though he must be sent out of the house at once.
Lady Adela was not at home, and Mary would have doubted about sending him to the Cottage, even if she had been there; so she quickly made up her mind that Eden and the young nursery-maid should take him at once to Westhaven, to be either in the hotel or at Northmoor Cottage, according as his aunt should decide.
How little she had thought, when she heard him say his prayers, and exchanged kisses with him at the side of his little bed, that it was the last time for many a long day; and that her hungry spirit would have to feed itself on that last smile and kiss of the fat hand, as she looked out of her husband’s window as the carriage drove away.
Lady Adela knew too well what it was to be desolate not to come home so as to be at hand, though she left her little daughter at her uncle’s. Bertha came on the following day.
‘I feel as if it were all my doing,’ she said. ‘I could not bear it, if it does not go well with him, after being the saving of poor little Cea.’
‘There is nothing to reproach yourself with,’ said sober-minded Lady Adela. ‘Neither you nor he could guess that he was running into infection.’