"I showed him into the study, ma'am."
Valentine ran downstairs; her eagerness and impatience and growing presentiment that something was at hand increased with each step she took. She entered the study, and said in a brusque voice, and with a bright color in her cheeks:—
"Well?"
"Mr. Paget has sent me to you, Mrs. Wyndham," said Helps, in his uniformly weak tones. "Mr. Paget is ill, and he wants to see you at once."
Valentine stepped back a pace.
"My father!" she said. "But he knows I do not care to go to the house."
"He knows that fact very well, Mrs. Wyndham."
"Still he sent for me?"
"He did, madam."
"Is my father worse than usual?"