But Frances did not require to wait for the news she looked for so anxiously. “Yes, I am very serious,” Sir Thomas said, in answer to Lady Markham’s question. “I have news to tell you which will shock you. Your poor young friend Gaunt--Captain Gaunt--wasn’t he a friend of yours?--is lying dangerously ill of fever in a poor little set of lodgings he has got. He is far too ill to know me or say anything to me; but so far as I can make out, it has something to do with losses at play.” Lady Markham turned pale with alarm and horror. “Oh, I have always been afraid of this! I had a presentiment,” she cried. Then rallying a little: “But, Sir Thomas, no one thinks now that fever is brought on by mental causes. It must be bad water or defective drainage.” “It may be--anything; I can’t tell; I am no doctor. But the fact is, the young fellow is lying delirious, raving. I heard him myself--about stakes and chances and losses, and how he will make it up to-morrow. There are other things too. He seems to have had hard lines, poor fellow, if all is true.” Frances had rushed forward, unable to restrain herself. “Oh, his mother, his mother--we must send for his mother,” she cried. “I will go and see him to-morrow,” said Lady Markham. “I had a presentiment. He has been on my mind ever since I saw him first. I blame myself for losing sight of him. But to-morrow----” “To-morrow--to-morrow; that is what the poor fellow says.” CHAPTER XLIII. Lady Markham did not forget her promise. Whatever else a great lady may forget in these days, her sick people, her hospitals, she is sure never to forget. She went early to the lodgings, which were not far off, hidden in one of the quaint corners of little old lanes behind Piccadilly, where poor Gaunt was. She did not object to the desire of Frances to go with her, nor to the anxiety she showed. The man was ill; he had become a “case;” it was natural and right that he should be an object of interest. For herself, so far as Lady Markham’s thoughts were free at all, George Gaunt was much more than a case to her. A little while ago, she would have given him a large share in her thoughts, with a remorseful consciousness almost of a personal part in the injury which had been done him. But now there were so many other matters in the foreground of her mind, that this, though it gave her one sharp twinge, and an additional desire to do all that could be done for him, had yet fallen into the background. Besides, things had arrived at a climax: there was no longer any means of delivering him, no further anxiety about his daily movements; there he lay, incapable of further action. It was miserable, yet it was a relief. Markham and Markham’s associates had no more power over a sick man.