little child!"

They clung together, weeping. In each mind was a great o'ershadowing
dread, but the dread was not the same. The father asked of himself--
Would the boy _die_? The mother--Would he live, blinded, maimed,
crippled?

The door opened, a small face peered in and withdrew. Pixie had seen
the entwined arms, the heads pressed together, and realised that she was
not needed. She crept away, and sat alone watching the slow dawn.

The verdict of the specialists brought no lessening of the strain. It
was too soon to judge; the shock was severe, and it was a question of
strength holding out. Too soon to talk about the eyes. That must be
left. There were injuries, no doubt, but in the present condition of
inflammation and collapse it was only possible to wait. And to wait
was, to the distracted mother, the most unbearable torture she could
have had to endure.

The great house was quiet as the grave; the three guests had departed,
little Geoff had been carried away by the vicar's wife to the refuge of
her own full, healthful nursery. The boy was shocked and silenced by
the thought of his brother's danger, but at five years of age a
continuance of grief is as little to be expected as desired, and nothing
could be left to chance. A cry beneath the window, a sudden, unexpected
noise might be sufficient to turn the frail balance.

Pixie was alone, more helplessly, achingly alone than she had been in
her life. The doors of the sickroom were closed against her. Joan had
no need of her. Joan wanted Geoffrey--Geoffrey, only--Geoffrey alone to
herself. Even Bridgie's telegraphed offer had been refused. "Not now!
No. Don't let her come--later on," Esmeralda said, and turned
restlessly away, impatient even of the slight interruption.

If it had been an ordinary, middle-class house, wherein sudden illness
brings so much strain and upset, Pixie would have expended herself in
service, and have found comfort in so doing, but in the great ordered
house all moved like a well-oiled machine. Meals appeared on the table
at the ordinary hours, were carried away untouched, to be replaced by
others equally tempting, equally futile. Banks of flowers bloomed in
the empty rooms, servants flitted about their duties; there was no stir,
no stress, no overwork, no need at all for a poor little sister-in-law;
nothing for her to do but wander disconsolately from room to room, from
garden to garden, to weep alone, and pour out