Frances’ spirits had fallen lower and lower while his rose. Her mind ranged over the new possibilities with something like despair. It would be Constance, not she, who would have done it, if he came back--Constance, who had taken her place from her--the love that ought to have been hers--her father--and who now, on her return, would resume her place with her mother too. Ah, what would Constance do? Would she do anything for him who lay yonder in the fever, for his father and his mother, poor old people!--anything to make up for the harm she had done? Her heart burned in her agitated, troubled bosom. “It is nothing,” she said--“nothing that you would do for me. I had a great wish--but I know you would not let me do it, neither you nor my mother.” “Tell me what it is, and we shall see.” Frances felt her voice die away in her throat. “We went this morning to see--to see----” “You mean poor Gaunt. It is a sad sight, and a sad story--too sad for a young creature like you to be mixed up in. Is it anything for him, that you want me to do?” She looked at him through those hot gathering tears which interrupt the vision of women, and blind them when they most desire to see clearly. A sense of the folly of her hope, of the impossibility of making any one understand what was in her mind, overwhelmed her. “I cannot, I cannot,” she cried. “Oh, I know you are very kind. I wanted my own money, if I have any. But I know you will not give it me, nor think it right, nor understand what I want to do with it.” “Have you so little trust in me?” said Sir Thomas. “I hope, if you told me, I could understand. I cannot give you your own money, Frances; but if it were for a good--no, I will not say that--for a sensible, for a practicable purpose, you should have some of mine.” “Yours!” she cried, almost with indignation. “Oh no; that is not what I mean. They are nothing--nothing to you.” She paused when she had said this, and grew very pale. “I did not mean---- Sir Thomas, please do not say anything to mamma.” He took her hand affectionately between his own. “I do not half understand,” he said; “but I will keep your secret, so far as I know it, my poor little girl.” Lady Markham at her writing-table, with her back turned, went on with her correspondence all the time in high satisfaction and pleasure, saying to herself that it would be far better than Nelly Winterbourn’s--that it would be the finest match of the year. CHAPTER XLIV.