Having come to a climax, voice and feeling together, in those words, Miss Bethune suddenly burst into the tempest of tears which all this time had been gathering and growing beyond any power of hers to restrain them. “Oh, my dear leddy, my dear leddy!” Gilchrist said; then, gradually drawing nearer, took her mistress’s head upon her ample bosom till the fit was over. When Miss Bethune had calmed herself again, she pushed the maid away. “I’ll have no communication with you,” she said. “You’re a good enough servant, you’re not an ill woman; but as for real sympathy or support in what is most dear, it’s no’ you that will give them to any person. I’m neither wanting to go out nor to take my seam. I will maybe read a book to quiet myself down, but I’m not meaning to hold any communication with you.” “Oh, mem!” said Gilchrist, in appeal: but she was not deeply cast down. “If it was about the young gentleman,” she added, after a moment, “I just think he is as nice a young gentleman as the world contains.” “Did I not tell you so?” cried the mistress in triumph. “And like the gracious blood he’s come of,” she said, rising to her feet again, as if she were waving a flag of victory. Then she sat down abruptly, and opened upside down the book she had taken from the table. “But I’ll hold no communication with you on that subject,” she said. CHAPTER XVIII. Mr. Mannering had got into his sitting-room the next day, as the first change for which he was able in his convalescent state. The doctor’s decree, that he must give up work for a year, and spend the winter abroad, had been fulminated forth upon him in the manner described by Dora, as a means of rousing him from the lethargy into which he was falling. After Dr. Roland had refused to permit of his speedy return to the Museum, he had become indifferent to everything except the expenses, concerning which he was now on the most jealous watch, declining to taste the dainties that were brought to him. “I cannot afford it,” was his constant cry. He had ceased to desire to get up, to dress, to read, which, in preparation, as he hoped, for going out again, he had been at first so eager to do. Then the doctor had delivered his full broadside. “You may think what you like of me, Mannering; of course, it’s in your power to defy me and die. You can if you like, and nobody can stop you: but if you care for anything in this world,--for that child who has no protector but you,"--here the doctor made a pause full of force, and fixed the patient with his eyes,--“you will dismiss all other considerations, and make up your mind to do what will make you well again, without any more nonsense. You must do it, and nothing less will do.” “Tell the beggar round the corner to go to Italy for the winter,” said the invalid; “he’ll manage it better than I. A man can beg anywhere, he carries his profession about with him. That’s, I suppose, what you mean me to do.”