"She is wearied out now, mother, but will be better soon. Let me lay her in her bed."
She had already fallen into the sleep of utter exhaustion. He placed her comfortably on the bed, while the mother drew down the blinds and Caius stretched himself on the floor by her side.
"Kenneth, my dear boy, oh, what a comfort to have you here again!" whispered Mrs. Clendenin, as they clasped each other in a long, tender embrace.
Leaving Caius to watch the slumbers of their dear one, they withdrew to the sitting-room.
"What do you think of her?" There was another, an unspoken question in the mother's pleading anxious eyes.
Kenneth's answer to it was, "Let your poor heart be at rest, mother, it is not that."
A cloud of care, of deep and sore anxiety lifted from her brow, and she wept tears of joy and thankfulness.
"Anything but that," she sighed, "any other burden seems light in comparison with that. But, Kenneth, the child is certainly ill, have you discovered the cause of her malady?"
"Yes," he said, "and have brought her a cure which, though it must be painful at first, will, I doubt not, prove effectual in the end."
Then he repeated Marian's story, having won her consent that he should do so, and added his own knowledge of Lyttleton.