ng home. Now and then a sob escaped her,
but no tears. She flew upstairs to her own boy's nursery, and fell down
on her knees by the side of his little crib. He was lying in rosy sleep,
his little dimpled arms thrown up over his head, a model of baby beauty.
But even that sight did not restore her. She buried her wan face in her
hands and so gasped for breath that Sir Tom, who had followed her, took
her in his arms and carrying her to her own room laid her down on the
sofa by the fire and did all that man could to soothe her.

"Lucy, Lucy! we must thank God that all is well with our own," he said,
half terrified by the gasping and the paleness; and then she burst
forth:

"Oh, why should it be well with him, and little Willie gone? Why should
we be happy and the others miserable? My baby safe and warm in my arms,
and poor Ellen's--poor Ellen's----"

This name, and the recollection of the poor young mother, whom she had
left in her desolation, made Lucy's tears pour forth like a summer
storm. She flung her arms round her husband's neck, and called out to
him in an agony of anxiety and excitement:

"Oh, what shall we do to save him? Oh, Tom, pray, pray! Little Willie
was well on Saturday--and now--How can we tell what a day may bring
forth?" Lucy cried, wildly pushing him away from her, and rising from
the sofa.

Then she began to pace about the room as we all do in trouble, clasping
her hands in a wild and inarticulate appeal to heaven. Death had never
come across her path before save in the case of her father, an old man
whose course was run, and his end a thing necessary and to be looked
for. She could not get out of her eyes the vision of that little solemn
figure, so motionless, so marble white. The thought would not leave her.
To see the calm Lucy pacing up and down in this passion of terror and
agony made Sir Tom almost as miserable as herself. He tried to take her
into his arms, to draw her back to the sofa.

"My darling, you are over-excited. It has been too much for you," he
said.

"Oh, what does it matter about me?" cried Lucy; "think--oh, God! oh, God
I--if we should have _that_ to bear."

"My dear love--my Lucy, you that have always been so reasonable--the
child is quite well; come and see him again and satisfy yourself."

"Little Willie was quite well on Saturday," she cried again. "Oh, I
cannot bear it, I cannot bear it! and why should it be poor Ellen and
not me?"

When a person of composed min