mysterious gates of sorrow again unclosed; yet, darling of her own as
Aubrey was, Ethel's first thoughts and fears were primarily for her
father. Grief and alarm seemed chiefly to touch her through him, and
she found herself praying above all that he might be shielded from
suffering, and might be spared a renewal of the pangs that had before
wrung his heart.

By early morning every one was astir; and Gertrude, bewildered and
distressed, yet rather enjoying the fun of staying with Richard, was
walking off with Mary.

Soon after, Dr. Spencer was standing by the bedside of his old patient,
Aubrey, who had been always left to his management.

'Ah, I see,' he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, 'for once
there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will show
what intelligent nursing can do.'

'I believe you are delighted,' growled Aubrey.

'So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.'

'I've no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,' said
Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief.

For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire
to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed
the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in his
present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he would
not add to her father's distress in the freshness of Margaret's death,
and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn over the
lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the discoveries he might
have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any strange chance he had
come back at all, he would have been so rabid on improved nursing and
sanatory measures, that there would have been no living with him.

It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his friend
called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and his
'town councillor's conservatism,' and hatred of change, as well as the
amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of things as
they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether the enemy
had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond Buildings'
miasma, was the favourite enlivenment of the disagreeing doctors, in
their brief intervals of repose in the stern conflict which they were
waging with the fever--a conflict in which they had soon to strive by
themselves, for the disease not only seized on young Ward, but on his
father;