telling you there were none--and you--Why, I could have shown him
scores.'

She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her
cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave
her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and
yet soft, like a song,--not a song of romance or passion, but like
the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded
him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least
like his mother, but there was something in her expression that
first youth cannot have--something comforting, profound, sustaining.

He wanted her always to sit there. But his mind wandered from what
she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.

'Is father there?' he asked, trying to turn his head, and failing.

'Not yet.'

'Poor father! Elizabeth!' he spoke the name with a boyish shyness.

'Yes!' She stooped over him.

'You won't go away?'

Elizabeth hesitated a moment, and he looked distressed.

'From Mannering, I mean. Do stay, Broomie!'--the name slipped out,
and in his weakness he did not notice it--'Pamela knows--that she
was horrid!'

'Dear Desmond, I will do everything I can for Pamela.'

'And for father?'

'Yes, indeed--I will be all the help I can,' repeated Elizabeth.

Desmond relapsed into silence and apparent sleep. But Elizabeth's
heart smote her. She felt she had not satisfied him.

* * * * *

But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she
seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room. Only she could
lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair
terrified the household. The nurses and doctors depended on her for
all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to
hospital service. The servants of the house would have worked all
night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond. Yet all this was scarcely
seen--it was only felt--'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of
us have known the same experience--how, when human beings come to
the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women,
who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and
noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.
It was so at Mannering. A tender, unconscious sovereignty
established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped
themselves round it.

Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that a