Miss Bethune shook her head and said, “Such extravagance!” in Dr. Roland’s ear. He was more tolerant. “They are all the pleasures the poor man has,” he said. But they did not make the problem more easy as to how the present expenses were to be met when the quarter’s pay came in, even if it could be made available by Dora’s only friends, who were “no relations,” and had no right to act for her. Miss Bethune went through a great many abstruse calculations in the mornings which she spent alone. She was well off,--but that is a phrase which means little or much, according to circumstances; and she had a great many pensioners, and already carried a little world on her shoulders, to which she had lately added the unfortunate little Mrs. Hesketh, and the husband, who found it so difficult to get another place. Many cares of a similar kind were on this lady’s head. She never gave a single subscription to any of the societies: collectors for charities called on her in vain; but to see the little jottings of her expenses would have been a thing not without edification for those who could understand the cipher, or, rather, the combination of undecipherable initials, in which they were set down. She did not put M. for Mannering in her accounts; but there were a great many items under the initial W., which no one but herself could ever have identified, which made it quite sure that no stranger going over these accounts could make out who Miss Bethune’s friends were. She shook her head over that W. If Dora were left alone, what relics would there be for her out of the future quarter’s pay, so dreadfully forestalled, even if the pay did not come to a sudden stop at once? And, on the other hand, if the poor man got better, and had to face a long convalescence with that distracting prospect before him, no neighbour any longer daring to pay those expenses which would be quite as necessary for him in his weak state as they were now? Miss Bethune could do nothing but shake her head, and feel her heart contract with that pang of painful pity in which there is no comfort at all. And in the meantime everything went on as if poor Mannering were a millionaire, everything was ordered for him with a free hand which a prince could have had; and Mrs. Simcox excelled herself in making the nurses, poor things, comfortable. What could any one do to limit this full flowing tide of liberality? Of course, he must have everything that could possibly be wanted for him; if he did not use it, at least it must be there in case he might use it. What could people who were “no relations” do? What could Dora do, who was only a child? And indeed, for the matter of that, what could any one, even in the fullest authority, have done to hinder the sick man from having anything which by the remotest possibility might be of use to him? Thus affairs went on with a dreadful velocity, and accumulation of wrath against the day of wrath.