count of Alice I am going. I may
just as well tell you: I want to bring her and George together again
if possible."

"Will she go if she knows that is your end?"

"She need not know."

"It is not a very dignified course," Miss Adamson said.

"No, and if it were an ordinary case I should not think of it."

"But you think him a very ordinary man?"

"A duke is different. Consider what an amount of influence Alice
would have, and how well she would use it; and he may marry a vain,
frivolous, senseless woman, incapable of a good action. Indeed, most
likely, for such people are sure to hunt him."

"I would not join in the hunt," said Miss Adamson. "If he is the man
you suppose him to be, the wound his self-love got will have killed
his love; and if he is the man I think, no hunters will make him their
prey. A small man would know instantly why you went to London, and
enjoy his triumph."

"I don't think George would: he is too simple; but if I did not think
it a positive duty, I would not go. However, we shall see: I don't
think of going before the middle of January."

Positive duties can be like the animals that change color with what
they feed on.

VI.

When the middle of January came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an
illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand
struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed,
various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the
drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took
it, his daughter took it, also Thomas the footman, and others of the
inhabitants, as well as Lady Arthur. The doctor of the place came and
lived In the house; besides that, two of the chief medical men from
town paid almost daily visits. Bottles of the water supplied to the
hall were sent to eminent chemists for analysis: the drainage was
thoroughly examined, and men were set to make it as perfect and
innocuous as it is in the nature of drainage to be.

Lady Arthur wished Miss Adamson and Alice to leave the place for a
time, but they would not do so: neither of them was afraid, and they
stayed and nursed her ladyship well, relieving each other as it was
necessary.

At one point of her illness Lady Arthur said to Miss Adamson, who was
alone with her, "Well, I never counted on this. Our family have all
had a trick of living to extreme old age, never dying till they could
not help it; but it will be grand to get away so soo