"With her?--with whom?" cried Richard, starting out of a reverie.
"With that sweet young lady, Ellen Adair?"
"There's nothing amiss with her that I know of."
"Isn't there! There is, Mr. Richard, if my judgment and eyes are to be trusted. Each time I see her, she strikes me as looking worse and worse. You notice her, sir. Perhaps now the clue has been given you'll see it too. I once knew a young girl, Mr. Richard, that was dying quietly under her friends' very eyes, and they never saw it. Never saw it at all, till an aunt came over from another country. She started back when she saw the child, and says: 'Why, what have yon been doing with her? She's dying.' They were took aback at that, and called in the first doctor: but it was too late. I don't say Ellen Adair is dying, Mr. Richard; 'tisn't likely; but I'm sure she is not all right. Whether it's the mind, or whether it's the body, or whether it's the nerves, I'm not prepared to say; but it's something."
"I will find out," said Richard.
"Anything fresh about the men, Mr. Richard?"
"Nothing. Except that my workmen are getting afraid to stir out at night, and the disaffection increases amongst the others. I cannot see what is to be the end of it," he continued. "I do not mean of this rivalry, but of the sad state to which the men and their families are reduced. I often wish I did not think of it so much: it is like a chain about me from which I cannot escape. I wish I could help them to find work elsewhere."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Gass, "work elsewhere is very nice to think about in dreamland; but I'm afraid it'll never be seen for them in reality. It's not as if work was going a-begging: it has broken up everywhere, Mr. Richard; and shoals and shoals of men, destitute as our own, are tramping about at this minute, like so many old ravens with their mouths open, ready to pick up anything that may fall."
Richard North went home, his mind full of what Mrs. Gass had said about Ellen Adair. Was she indeed looking so ill? He found her sitting in the open seat near what would be in spring the tulip bed. Mr. North had just left her and gone in. Yes: Richard saw that she looked very ill; the face was wan, the eyes were sad and weary. She was coughing as he went up to her: a short, hacking cough. Some time ago she had caught cold, and it seemed to hang about her still.
"Are you well, Ellen?" he asked, as he sat down beside her.