“Well, my darling?”
“Where’s the use of your trying to deceive me? Do you think I don’t see that you are doing it? I’m not a baby; you might if it were Archibald. What is it that’s the matter with me?”
“Nothing. Only you are not strong. When you get strong again, you will be as well as ever.”
William shook his head in disbelief. He was precisely that sort of child from whom it is next to impossible to disguise facts; quick, thoughtful, observant, and advanced beyond his years. Had no words been dropped in his hearing, he would have suspected the evil, by the care evinced for him, but plenty of words had been dropped; hints, by which he had gathered suspicion; broad assertions, like Hannah’s, which had too fully supplied it; and the boy in his inmost heart, knew as well that death was coming for him as that death itself did.
“Then, if there’s nothing the matter with me, why could not Dr. Martin speak to you before me to-day? Why did he send me into the other room while he told you what he thought? Ah, Madame Vine, I am as wise as you.”
“A wise little boy, but mistaken sometimes,” she said from her aching heart.
“It’s nothing to die, when God loves us. Lord Vane says so. He had a little brother who died.”
“A sickly child, who was never likely to live, he had been pale and ailing from a baby,” spoke Lady Isabel.
“Why! Did you know him?”
“I—I heard so,” she replied, turning off her thoughtless avowal in the best manner she could.