"I came home two evenings ago and found her on the bed."
"You don't want me, you say. Who do you expect is going to sit up with her and take care of her?"
"I will try what I can do, for the present."
"You can't manage that and your out-door work too."
"I will manage that"—said Basil significantly.
"And let your parish work go? Well, I always thought a minister was bound to attend to his people."
"Yes. Isn't my wife more one of my people than anybody else? Will you stay and take a cup of tea, Mrs. Starling?"
"No; if you don't want me, I am going. What will you do if Diana gets delirious? I think she's out of her head now."
"I'll attend to her," said Basil composedly.
Half suspecting a double meaning in his words, Mrs. Starling took short leave, and drove off. Not quite easy in her mind, if the truth be told, and glad to be out of all patience with the minister. Yes, if she had known how things would turn—if she had known—perhaps, she would not have thrown that first letter into the fire; which had drawn her on to throw the second in, and the third. Could any son-in-law, could Evan Knowlton, at least, have been more untoward for her wishes than the one she had got? More unmanageable he could not have been; nor more likely to be spooney about Diana. And now what if Diana really should have a fever? People talk out in delirium. Well—the minister would keep his own counsel; she did not care, she said. But all the same, she did care; and she would fain have been the only one to receive Diana's revelations, if she could have managed it. And by what devil's conjuration had the truth come to be revealed, when only the fire and she knew anything about it. Mrs. Starling chewed the cud of no sweet fancy on her road home.