suddenly made her so curious?" he exclaimed; and I
was obliged to tell him that I was at the bottom of the mystery. I had
had it on my conscience to assure her that she really ought to know
of what her husband was capable. "Of what I am capable? _Elle ne s'en
dottie que trop!_" said Ambient, with a laugh; but he took my meddling
very good-naturedly, and contented himself with adding that he was very
much afraid she would burn up the sheets, with his emendations, of which
he had no duplicate. The doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, and
before he came down I retired to my own quarters, where I remained till
dinner-time. On entering the drawing-room at this hour, I found Miss
Ambient in possession, as she had been the evening before.

"I was right about Dolcino," she said, as soon as she saw me, with a
strange little air of triumph. "He is really very ill."

"Very ill! Why, when I last saw him, at four o'clock, he was in fairly
good form."

"There has been a change for the worse, very sudden and rapid, and when
the doctor got here he found diphtheritic symptoms. He ought to have
been called, as I knew, in the morning, and the child ought n't to have
been brought into the garden."

"My dear lady, he was very happy there," I answered, much appalled.

"He would be happy anywhere. I have no doubt he is happy now, with his
poor little throat in a state--" she dropped her voice as her brother
came in, and Mark let us know that, as a matter of course, Mrs. Ambient
would not appear. It was true that Dolcino had developed diphtheritic
symptoms, but he was quiet for the present, and his mother was earnestly
watching him. She was a perfect nurse, Mark said, and the doctor was
coming back at ten o'clock. Our dinner was not very gay; Ambient was
anxious and alarmed, and his sister irritated me by her constant tacit
assumption, conveyed in the very way she nibbled her bread and sipped
her wine, of having "told me so." I had had no disposition to deny
anything she told me, and I could not see that her satisfaction in being
justified by the event made poor Dolcino's throat any better. The truth
is that, as the sequel proved, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities
of the sibyl, and had therefore, perhaps, a right to the sibylline
contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence
to be an indiscretion, and was sorry I had promised to remain over the
morrow. I said to Mark that, evidently, I had better leave them