Annie then asked to see the housekeeper, and learned from her that Harry’s accident was indeed as serious as Aubrey Cooke’s words had implied. He had slipped as he was getting into the dog-cart, one night after supping with some friends in Beckham--Annie happened to know something about those friends--and the wheel had passed over him and broken his left arm, besides inflicting other less serious injuries; he had not yet quite recovered from another illness, and had been disregarding his doctor’s orders. After being taken to a surgeon by the gentleman who was with him, to have his arm set, he had insisted on being driven back home to the Grange at five o’clock in the morning. The housekeeper continued that he had then, contrary to the advice she had ventured to give him, insisted upon drinking brandy in the billiard-room; that she had waited about, not daring to go in and speak to him again, until she heard a fall and a groan, and, running in, had found that he had fallen and again displaced his broken arm. She had got him to bed with the help of the men-servants and sent for the doctor; but no skill could prevent inflammation of the wounded limb, and he was now lying in a high fever and could recognize no one. “I would strongly advise you not to see him, ma’am, until he is quieter. He is very violent, and he uses dreadful language.” “I don’t suppose he says anything worse than what I have heard him say when he was in full possession of his senses, Mrs. Stanley,” said Annie, quietly. “It is not fair that all the care of nursing my husband should fall upon you; so, if you please, I will go to him now.” Mrs. Stanley led the way to the room to which they had carried him--not his own, but a larger and more convenient one. She drew the arm of the young wife through her own as they entered, for Annie had grown very white and was shaking from head to foot when her husband’s voice, speaking disjointedly to an imaginary listener, met her ear. She recovered her self-command before venturing to look at him; but, however strong her emotion might have been, it would not have affected him. He took no notice of her presence; his wide-open eyes did not even see her. Annie did not give way again; but from that hour she took her place by his bedside alternately with Mrs. Stanley, listening to idle babblings of his useless vicious life, to invectives against the carelessness of grooms, the meanness of his brother George, the “airs Sue gave herself.” But there was never one word of herself; she had passed out of his life; been forgotten, as if those few months of their married life had never been. Only once did he refer to her, and that was not to Annie, his wife, but to Miss Lane of Garstone Grange.