“Don’t say these things,” Polly whispered. “It was bound to come. I have felt all along that there was real danger to be feared in his future, and if he were to be a sufferer all his life, I—I almost rejoice that this has come. I grieve more for my mother now. He was her baby. Oh! she loves him so dearly.”
As the hours wore away thought of her mother pressed most hardly on the girl, and Grace hardly knew how to console her. In one of her quiet moments with Valentine in the corridor outside the sick room, Grace asked him how they should act.
“I can see that her heart is riven. She wants to spare her mother, and yet the truth must be told, for,” Grace added, in a lower voice, “Dr. Smythson fears the very worst. What can we do, Val?”
Valentine answered slowly that he should go himself to London and break the news to the mother, and also bring down other advice.
“Smythson may be mistaken,” he said, but Grace shook her head.
“Alas!” she answered, “I don’t need Dr. Smythson, or any other doctor, to tell me how poor a chance the boy has. Oh! Val, if only I had not taken him out yesterday!”
Valentine drew his sister toward him and kissed her brow.
“You distress yourself needlessly, dear,” he told her. “This has not come through any fault of yours. The boy was doomed to go, and go quickly. I saw it the first time my eyes rested upon him.”
He changed the subject here, and spoke of Polly. He was full of solicitude for the girl.
“Has she eaten sufficient food? Try and make her rest a little. Tell her to remember how important it is that she should keep up her strength. I want you to be very good to her, Grace.”