t that perhaps
he felt the strain of the situation, and that a little absence would be
good for both. This pleased her. She did not shrink, as she had so often
done since his return, when he laid his hand on hers for an instant,
as he asked her if she were willing that he should go. Sometimes in the
past few weeks she had almost hated him. Now she was a little sorry for
him, but she said that of course he must go; that no doubt it was good
that he should go, and so on, in gentle, allusive phrases. The next
evening she came down to dinner, and was more like herself as she was
before Frank came back, but she ate little, and before the men came into
the drawing-room she had excused herself, and retired; at which Mrs.
Lambert shook her head apprehensively at herself, and made up her mind
to stay at Greyhope longer than she intended.

Which was good for all concerned; for, two nights after Frank and
Richard had gone, Mackenzie hurried down to the drawing-room with the
news that Lali had been found in a faint on her chamber floor. That was
the beginning of weeks of anxiety, in which Mrs. Lambert was to Mrs.
Armour what Marion would have been, and more; and both to Lali all that
mother and sister could be.

Their patient was unlike any other that they had known. Feverish, she
had no fever; with a gentle, hacking cough, she had no lung trouble;
nervous, she still was oblivious to very much that went on around her;
hungering often for her child, she would not let him remain long with
her when he came. Her sleep was broken, and she sometimes talked to
herself, whether consciously or unconsciously they did not know. The
doctor had no remedies but tonics--he did not understand the case; but
he gently ventured the opinion that it was mostly a matter of race, that
she was pining because civilisation had been infused into her veins--the
old insufficient theory.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said General Armour, when his wife told him. "The
girl bloomed till Frank came back. God bless my soul! she's falling in
love, and doesn't know what it is."

He was only partly right, perhaps, but he was nearer the truth than the
dealer in quinine and a cheap philosophy of life. "She'll come around
all right, you'll see. Decline--decline be hanged! The girl shall
live,--damn it, she shall!" he blurted out, as his wife's eyes filled
with tears.

Mrs. Lambert was much of the same mind as the general, but went further.
She said to Mrs. Armour that in a