After a long wait she got some little idea. Her mother came and stood beside her silently for a minute or two, then she stooped down and kissed the girl’s hand tremulously, took up her basket with its burden, and went out of the room and upstairs. Gwen looked at the little dent made by the basket on the bed, and a new rush of loneliness flooded her. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THERE was always a sort of studious hush over Waring Park encompassing the whole place as in a garment, but one day a change crept suddenly into the nature of the hush, it lost all at once in culture and grew full of trembling awe; for Mrs. Waring lay upstairs on her great oak bed, her blue eyes looking out of her thin face full of a piteous longing. She had only a slight attack of pleurisy, nothing to account for her quick run down, but her heart was very weak and irregular, the old doctor said, and he asked for an opinion from town. The shock of the thing had a queer effect on Mr. Waring, even from a physical point of view. As he sat hour by hour and watched her in a dumb vague horror, one hand always in his, _his_ breath came in short gasps with strong pain, _his_ eyes grew congested, _his_ lips turned a dull blue, and dried and cracked, the very blood slowed in his veins. The old doctor sounded him anxiously as soon as he noticed his condition, and found his lungs as sound as a bell. It was only that the two were absolutely one flesh; she could suffer nothing and leave him untouched. She was so sorry for him and whenever she could gather up her strength for the effort, she put a great strain on herself to breathe naturally, but hour by hour her power over herself grew less, and her breathing more constantly laborious. And Gwen? Fear had found her at last, and it tore and tortured her. She knew very little of sickness, and in this sickness of her mother’s there was a pale ghastly shade of some other thing that touched the infinities. She went in and out of her mother’s room in a vague search after duty, but she never touched even her bed; she was afraid of the awful shadowy thing, and more afraid still of her mother’s eyes following her hungrily. No softening grew in her eyes, no love—only fear. And so the days wore on and the hush fell closer round the house, and crept into the hearts of those that dwelt there. Yet there seemed small cause for it all, the doctors saw no tangible reason for alarm, and yet they were uneasy and came frequently. It was the eighth day of the illness, just as twilight was falling. Mrs. Waring had had her bed moved near the window that commanded the Park, and she was looking wistfully out on to the south terrace watching Gwen walking up and down.