Patricia found her post no sinecure. The first thing she did was to send Lady Chesterwood and her little boy to Ivydene; for Mamie’s fear of infection was so great that she would most certainly have caught the disease had she remained, even though the south wing in which the child lay was quite apart from the rest of the house. Moore’s foolish aversion to professional nurses entailed greater vigilance on the part of the two physicians who were attending the case, and they were obliged to visit the Hall three or four times in the course of the day. In reality the little girl was suffering from a peculiarly mild form of the disease, but her father was so nervous that the very pronouncement of the word “diphtheria” had frightened him beyond measure. For himself he entertained no fear—his was too strong a nature to admit of cowardice; but his love for his child was passionate almost to excess. Patricia had never seen anything like it in her life. His time was divided between Downing Street, the House of Commons, and Ravenscroft Hall. At the Foreign Office he was dictatorial and shrewd; in the House his speeches lacked nothing of their usual brilliance; but as soon as he returned to the Hall he became a different man. The pomposity departed from him, his step became light, his voice subdued; and ascending the staircase on tiptoe, the usual question, “How is she?” fell almost pathetically from his lips. If she were a little better his happiness knew no bounds, but if worse, his spirits sank to zero; and one night, when the child was really in danger, there ensued a scene which the Hall servants remembered for months. The doctors would not allow him to remain in the room, so he paced the corridor, almost distraught; and as no one dared say a word to comfort him without the fear of instant dismissal, he was left to drink his cup of bitterness alone. But Patricia, coming off duty an hour later, brought him the welcome news that Phyllis was asleep and the crisis almost past; and inducing him to accompany her to the adjoining housekeeper’s room, talked to him quietly for a little while. She looked pale from lack of sleep, and her eyes were heavy; but in his stress of mind and self-absorption he scarcely spared her a thought. “Do you really think she will get better—on your word of honour?” he asked, for the hundredth time; “or are you only saying it to comfort me? I don’t want to be buoyed up by false hopes; I would rather know the worst. I— Oh dear, how my head seems to spin! Or is it the room that is going round like a top?” The girl helped him to a chair, and forced him to take a little brandy.