herself away, she let him keep her hand, and again he dozed and his fingers relaxed. 'Go now, my dear,' said Mrs. Poynsett, 'you have saved him. This stone will show him that you have been here. You will come back to-morrow, I may promise him?'
'Yes, yes. In the morning, or whenever I can be spared,' whispered Lena, who was held for a moment to Mrs. Poynsett's breast, ere Rosamond took her away again, and brought her once more down-stairs and to the pony- carriage. There she leant back, weeping quietly but bitterly over the shock of Frank's terribly reduced state, which seemed to take from her all the joy of his revival, weeping too at the cruel need that was taking her away.
'He will do now! I know he will,' said Rosamond, happy in her bold venture.
'Oh! if I could stay!'
'Most likely you would be turned out for fear of excitement. The stone will be safer for him.'
'Where did that come from?' asked Lenore, struck suddenly with wonder.
'I wrote to Miss Strangeways, when I saw how he was always feeling, feeling, feeling for it, like the Bride of Lammermoor. I told her there was more than she knew connected with that bit of stone, and life or death might hang on it. Then when I'd got it, I hardly knew what to do with it, for if it had soothed the poor boy delirious, the coming to his right mind might have been all the worse.'
Rosamond kissed her effusively, and she dreamily muttered, 'He must be saved.' There was a sort of strange mist round her, as though she knew not what she was doing, and she longed to be alone. She would not let Rosamond drive her beyond the Sirenwood gate, but insisted on walking through the park alone in the darkness, by that very path where Frank had ten months ago exchanged vows with her.
Rosamond turned back to the Hall. It was poor Cecil's pony-carriage that she was driving, and she took it to the stable-yard, where her entreaty had obtained it from the coachman, whom she rewarded by saying, 'I was right, Brown, I fetched his best doctor,' and the old servant understood, and came as near a smile as any one at Compton could do on such a day.
'Is the carriage gone for Mr. Charnock?'
'Yes, my lady, I sent Alfred with it; I did not seem as if I could go driving into Wil'sbro' on such a day.'
Rosamond bade a kind farewell to the poor old coachman, and was walking homewards, when she saw a figure advancing towards her, strangely familiar, and yet hat and coat forbade her to believe it her husband, even in the dusk. She could not help exclaiming, 'Miles!'
'Yes!' he said, coming to a standstill. 'Are you Rosamond?'
'I am;-Anne is quite well and Frank better. Oh! this will do them good! You know-'
'Yes-yes, I know,' he said hastily, as if he could not bear to let himself out to one as yet a stranger. 'My mother?'
'Absorbed in Frank too much to feel it yet fully; Anne watches them both. Oh! Miles, what she has been!' and she clasped his hand again. 'Let me call her.'
And Rosamond opened the hall door just as some instinct, for it could hardly have been sense of hearing, had brought Anne upon the stairs, where, as Miles would have hurried up to her, she seemed, in the light gray dress she still wore, to hover like some spirit eluding his grasp like the fabled shades.
'Oh no! you ought not. Infection-I am steeped in it.'
'Nonsense,' and she was gathered into the strong grasp that was home and rest to her, while Miles was weeping uncontrollably as he held her in his arms. 'O, Nannie, Nannie! I did not think it would be like this. Why did they keep me till he was gone? No, I did not get the telegram, I only heard at the station. They let me go this morning, and I did think I should have been in time.' He loosed himself from her, and hung over the balustrade, struggling with a strong man's anguish, then said in a low voice, 'Did he want me?'
'He knew it was your duty,' said Anne. 'We all were thankful you were kept from infection, and he said many little things, but the chief was that he trusted you too much to leave any special messages. Hark! that must be Mr. Charnock, Cecil's father! I must go and receive him. Stay back, Miles, you can't now-you know my room-'
He signed acquiescence, but lingered in the dark to look down and see how, though Rosamond had waited to spare them this reception, his wife's tall graceful figure came forward, and her kindly comforting gestures, as the two sisters-in-law took the newcomer into the drawing-room, and in another minute Anne flitted up to him again. 'That good Rosamond is seeing to Mr. Charnock,' she said; 'will you come, Miles? I think it will do your mother good; only quietly, for Frank knows nothing.'
Mrs. Poynsett still sat by Frank. To Miles's eyes he was a fearful spectacle, but to Anne there was hourly progress; the sunken dejected look was gone, and though there was exhaustion, there was rest; but he was neither sleeping nor waking, and showed no heed when his brother dropped on one knee by his mother's side, put an arm round her waist, and after one fervent kiss laid his black head on her lap, hiding his face there while she fondled his hair, and said, 'Frank, Frankie dear, here's Miles come home.' He did not seem to hear, only his lips murmured something like 'Anne,' and the tender hand and ready touch of his unwearied nurse at once fulfilled his need, while his mother whispered, 'Miles, she is our blessing!'
Poor Miles! Never had sailor a stranger, though some may have had an even sadder, return. He had indeed found his wife, but hers was the only hand that could make Frank swallow the sustenance that he needed every half-hour, or who knew how to relieve him. Indeed, even the being together in the sick-room was not long possible, for Anne was called to the door. Mr. Charnock was asking to see Mrs. Poynsett. Would Mrs. Miles come and speak to him?
Mr. Charnock was a small and restless man with white hair, little black eyes, looking keener than they were, and a face which had evidently been the mould of Cecil's. He was very kind, with a full persuasion that the consolations of his august self must be infallible; but this was coupled with an inclination to reprove everybody for the fate that had left his cherished darling a childless widow at two-and-twenty. To take him to Frank's room was impossible, and he had to be roundly told so. Neither had he seen his daughter. She was very weak, but recovering, and Grindstone, whom he had seen and talked with, was as strenuous in deprecating any excitement as he was nervous about it. So he could only be disposed of in his room till dinner-time, when he came down prepared to comfort the family, but fulfilled his mission rather by doing such good as a blister, which lessens the force of the malady by counter-irritation.
Julius came up to be with Miles, and to help them through the dinner, the first which had been laid for many a long day. His enquiry for Cecil was answered: 'She is progressing as favourably as there can be reason to expect, but I have not seen her. I follow the judgment of her faithful Grindstone.'
'Then she still knows nothing-'
'Of her bereavement? No. Her state does not yet warrant it. In fact, I almost wish I had obeyed my original impulse, and brought down Venn to make the melancholy communication.'
To every one's surprise Anne bristled up, saying, 'Why, here is Julius, Mr. Charnock!'
Mr. Charnock bowed: 'I understand that my Cousin Julius has been engrossed by his wife's family and by the adjoining parish, the care of which he has assumed.'
Anne fairly coloured up, and exclaimed, 'Julius has been our main-stay and help in everything-I can't think how he has done it. He has been here whenever we needed him, as well as at Wil'sbro', where people have been dying everywhere, the poor Vicar and all-'
'Far be it from me to discourage philanthropy,' said Mr. Charnock, 'only I would have it within due bounds. I am an old-fashioned squire, of a school, it may be, antiquated, an advocate of the parochial system; and I cannot help thinking that if this had been closely adhered to by hot-headed young clergymen, my poor child might not have been a childless widow at two-and-twenty.'
Julius was too much tired and too sad-hearted to heed greatly what Mr. Charnock said. It was so strange to have Miles in sight, yet to feel so unable to be glad, that he scarcely heard anything. But Anne again took up the cudgels: 'Mr. Charnock, you don't suppose that it was anything Julius did that brought this fever here. It was going to the town-hall among the drains.'
'My dear Mrs. Miles Charnock, I am sure your husband will agree with me that sanitary arrangements and all connected with them are beyond the range of ladies, who are happily exempted from all knowledge of the subject.'
Anne could not say aloud that she wished Cecil had held this opinion, but she subsided, while Mr. Charnock prosed on, asking questions about the arrangements, and seeming shocked to hear that the funeral must be early the next day, this being one of the prime injunctions of the doctors, and that the one had been asked to attend it. It made him sigh again for his poor daughter, as he handed Anne in to dinner. She did not stay half through it, for it
