"What kind of night has she had?"
"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness."
"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so ill?"
"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind to require attention of any sort in the night."
"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to cheer and comfort her.
"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her."
"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly.
"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical experience, that conquered my wish."
"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the same when our hearts are breaking!"
The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she declared to be "comforting."