'Are you sure he cannot get any without your knowledge?' Ida asked. 'Dr. Mallison told me that in this malady a patient is terribly artful—that he will contrive to evade the closest watchfulness, if it is any way possible to get drink.'

'Ah, that's true enough, ma'am,' sighed the man; 'there's no getting to the bottom of their artfulness: but I'm an old hand, and I know all the ins and outs of the complaint. It isn't possible for Mr. Wendover to get any drink in this house, and he never goes out of it without me. Every drop of wine and spirits is under lock and key, and all the servants are warned against giving him anything.'

Ida sighed, full of shame at the thought that her husband, the man whom it was her duty to honour and obey, should be degraded by such humiliating precautions; and yet there was no help for it. He had brought himself to this pass. This is the end of ambrosial nights, the feast of reason, the flow of soul, wit drowned in whisky, satire stimulated by brandy and soda.

Ida went back to her brother's room. It was there her love, her fears, her cares were all concentrated. Duty might make her careful and thoughtful for her husband, but here love was paramount. To sit by his pillow, to talk to him, or read to him, or pray for him, to minister to him, jealous of the skilled nurse who had been hired to perform these offices,—these things were her delight. Lady Palliser, worn out with watching and anxiety, had now broken down altogether, and had consented to take a long day's rest; but Ida's more energetic nature could do with much less rest—half an hour's delicious sleep now and then, with her head on her darling's pillow, was all-sufficient to restore her.

And so the blessed days of hope went on, and every morning and every afternoon Mr. Fosbroke's report was more favourable. It was a tedious recovery from a cruel disease, happily shortened by at least two-thirds of its old-fashioned length by modern treatment; but all was going well, and the hearts of the watchers were at ease. The boy lay swathed in cotton wool, very helpless, very languid, fed and petted from morning till night, like a young bird brought up by hand: and Ida and her stepmother had to be patient and thankful.

Ida had often thought during the boy's illness of the man who had found him, and brought him safely home to them on that anxious day; and she wished much to testify her gratitude to the misanthropic dweller in the gamekeeper's cottage; but she hesitated as to her manner of approaching him. To go herself would be futile, when he had so obdurately shut his door against her. Then she had Vernon's assurance that this Bohemian hated women. She might have sent a servant with a message; but she had reason to know, from Vernon's description of the man, that he was altogether above the servant class, and would be likely to resent such a form of approach. She might have written to him; but her pride recoiled from that course, remembering his cavalier treatment of her. And so she let the days slip by, until Vernon began to recover strength and good spirits, and to inquire about his friend.

'I want Jack to come and see me, and sit with me,' said the boy; 'he could come to tea couldn't he, mother? You wouldn't mind, would you?'

'My dear, he is not a proper person for you to associate with,' replied Lady Palliser. 'You oughtn't to bemean yourself by associating with your inferiors.'

'Bemean fiddlesticks!' cried Vernie; 'I don't believe there is such a word. Jack is the cleverest man I know—cleverer than Mr. Jardine, and that's saying a great deal.'

Vainly did the widow endeavour to awaken her son's mind to the great gulf which divides a baronet from a hawker—a gulf not to be bridged over by the genius of a Dalton or a Whewell—and to those nice distinctions which obtain between a casual out-of-door intercourse with a man of this class, and a deliberate invitation to tea.