"Papa heard it. Some one had seen you walking home from the train: I think it was Mr. Hillary. But, Percival, ought you to have come here?" she added in alarm. "This is infected ground, you know."
"Not for me. I have no more fear of fever than I have of moonstroke. Anne, I hope you will not take it," he gravely added.
"I hope not, either. Like you, I have no fear of it. I am so glad Arthur is away. Was it not wrong of that landlady to let her rooms to us when she had fever in them?"
"Infamously wrong," said Lord Hartledon warmly.
"She excused herself afterwards by saying, that as the people who had the fever were in quite a different part of the house from ours, she thought there could be no danger. Papa was so angry. He told her he was sorry the law did not take cognizance of such an offence. We had been a week in the house before we knew of it."
"How did you find it out?"
"The lady who was ill with it died, and Matilda saw the coffin going up the back stairs. She questioned the servants of the house, and one of them told her all about it then, bit by bit. Another lady was lying ill, and a third was recovering. The landlady, by way of excuse, said the greatest wrong had been done to herself, for these ladies had brought the fever into her house, and brought it deliberately. Fever had broken out in their own home, some long way off, and they ran away from it, and took her apartments, saying nothing; which was true, we found."
"Two wrongs don't make a right," observed Lord Hartledon. "Their bringing the fever into her house was no justification for receiving you into it when it was there. It's the way of the world, Anne: one wrong leading to others. Is Matilda getting over it?"
"I hardly know. She is not out of danger; but Mr. Hillary has hopes of her. One of the other servants has taken it, and is worse than Matilda. Mr. Hillary has been with her three times to-day, and is coming again. She was ill when I last wrote to you, Val; but we did not know it."
"Which of them is it?" he asked.