"It will delay us quite half-an-hour," answers the other restlessly. "But stay" (a hazy look of reminiscence dawning over his preoccupied haggard face), "did you tell me that Amelia was ill--or did I dream it?" "No, you did not dream it," replies the other sadly. "She _is_ ill." Perhaps the wretchedness that pierces through his friend's quiet tones recalls the young dreamer to the fact that the world holds other miseries than his own. There is at all events something of his old quick sympathy in his next words, and in the way in which they are uttered: "Oh, poor Amelia, I _am_ sorry! By all means let us go at once and ask after her. Is there nothing that we can get?--nothing that we can do for her?" It is the question that Jim, in baffled anxiety, puts when he is admitted inside the dull _salon_, where no love-glorified, homely face to-night lights up the tender candles of its glad eyes, from over its stitching, at his entry. Sybilla is lying less comfortably than usual on her sofa, her cushions not plumped up, and her bottle of smelling-salts rolled out of her reach. Mr. Wilson is walking uneasily up and down the room, instead of sitting placidly in his chair, with the soothing voice--which he had always thought as much to be counted on, and as little to be particularly thankful for, as the air that fills his lungs--lullingly reading him to sleep. "Cecilia is with her just now," he says, in a voice of forlorn irritation. "I wish she would come down again; I have no great opinion of Cecilia as a sick-nurse, and she must know how anxious we are." A moment later, still pursuing his fidgety ramble from wall to wall, and exclaiming peevishly, as he stumbles over a footstool: "If it would only declare itself! There seems to be nothing to lay hold of, we are so completely in the dark--if it would only declare itself!" A not very subdued sob from the sofa is the only answer he gets, an answer which evidently irritates still further his fretted nerves. "I cannot think what Cecilia is doing!" he cries, hastening to the door, opening it noisily, and then listening. "Let me run up and see," says Jim, his heart going out to the fractious old man in a sympathy of suffering. "Yes, I know where her room is--_au troisième_, is not it?" (a flash of recollection lighting up the fact that Amelia's is distinctly the worst room of the suite occupied by the Wilson family; the room with most stairs to climb to, and least accommodation when you reach it). "I will knock quite gently. Do not be afraid, I will not disturb her, and I will come down immediately to tell you."