So while Ted helped Martha with his experience and comforted Aura as best he could, thereinafter remaining to give Peter Ramsay a hand in getting the old man to bed, Ned kicked his heels in the drawing-room. Sickness, with its possibility of death, always made him a little disdainful, and he had but a few stereotyped words of regret when, the crisis having passed, the three came in, Aura looking pale and troubled. "Was he as ill before?" she asked, her eyes seeking Ted's almost reproachfully. Ted's sought the doctor's. "Not quite," replied the latter. "These attacks--it is as well to be prepared for them, Miss Graham--tend to become more serious. He may not, I hope he will not, have another for a long time, but you must try and avoid any excitement." He held out his hand to say good-bye. "There's no reason to be alarmed, I assure you; with care, he may not have another for--for months." He clasped the girl's hand with strong, steady grip and smiled, but poor Aura, facing the one great reality for the first time, stood white and silent. Only when they had gone, she turned to Ted. "I don't know what I should have done without you," she said gratefully. Outside, as the motor disappeared in the darkness, Dr. Ramsay was saying nearly the same thing. "It is lucky Cruttenden was there and had an idea of what to do; lucky too that I didn't give you up and go home." "Sorry," responded Ned shortly. "Hope you had a good walk." "Excellent," replied Peter Ramsay with a little laugh. "I satisfied myself that hills and dales, and the round world generally, were mere manifestations of matter, and the Providence didn't shape my steps anyhow." CHAPTER XV Since the night on which poor Morris Pugh had sought in vain for God's Providence upon the mountain-top, he had not left his room; for rheumatic fever--that curse of Wales--had laid hold of him. The mental shock also militated against recovery. It would be almost impossible to overestimate what that shock had been, surcharged as he was by religious exaltation. He had been dashed from high heaven to earth, and at first he lay stunned, absolutely maimed. Then, as feeling returned to his numb mind, the desire to slip away and so avoid the necessity for thought was the despair of his mother, who had come from the lonely hill-farm, where she still was mistress, to be his devoted nurse. She was a woman of the true saintly type, full to the brim of sympathies and sentimentalities; as such, not one to be burdened with the reality of doubt.