has not seen
it."

Life began to come back to her. She had been so horribly bewildered as
to think at moments that perhaps it might be that a man who was very
much absorbed in affairs--

"The information you sent him is the most important, and moving, a man
in his position could receive."

"Do you think so, _really_?" She lifted her head with new courage and
her colour returned.

"It is impossible that it should be otherwise. It is, I assure you,
_impossible_, Lady Walderhurst."

"I am so thankful," she said devoutly. "I am so _thankful_ that I have
told you."

Anything more touching and attractive than her full eyes and her
grown-up child's smile he felt he had never seen.

Chapter Twenty two

The attack of fever which had seemed to begin lightly for Lord
Walderhurst assumed proportions such as his medical man had not
anticipated. His annoyance at finding his duties interfered with fretted
him greatly. He was not, under the circumstances, a good patient, and,
partly as a result of his state of mind, he began, in the course of a
few weeks, to give his doctors rather serious cause for anxiety. On the
morning following Emily's confession to Dr. Warren she had received a
letter from her husband's physician, notifying her of his new anxieties
in connection with his patient. His lordship required extreme care and
absolute freedom from all excitement. Everything which medical science
and perfect nursing could do would be done. The writer asked Lady
Walderhurst's collaboration with him in his efforts at keeping the
invalid as far as possible in unperturbed spirits. For some time it
seemed probable that letter writing and reading would be out of the
question, but if, when correspondence might be resumed, Lady Walderhurst
would keep in mind the importance of serenity to the convalescent, the
case would have all in its favour. This, combined with expressions of
sympathetic encouragement and assurances that the best might be hoped
for, was the gist of the letter. When Dr. Warren arrived, Emily handed
the epistle to him and watched him as he read it.

"You see," she said when he looked up, "that I did not speak too soon.
Now I shall have to trust to you for everything. I could _never_ have
borne it _all_ by myself. Could I?"

"Perhaps not," thinking it over; "but you are very brave."

"I don't think I'm brave," thinking it over on her own part, "but it
seemed as if there were things I _must_ do. But now you w