With the same rapidity that the sickness had appeared, so did it subside in Dallory. Mrs. Rane's was the last serious case: the last death; the very few cases afterwards were of the mildest description; and within a fortnight of the time that ill-fated lady was laid in the ground, people were restoring their houses and throwing their rooms open to the renewed air. The inhabitants in general, rallying their courage, thought the sooner they forgot the episode the better. Excepting perhaps by the inmates of those houses from which some one had been taken, they did soon forget it. It was surprising--now that fear was at an end and matters could be summed up dispassionately--how few the losses were. With the exception of Henry Hepburn the undertaker and Mrs. Rane, they were entirely amongst the poor working people out on strike, and, even here, were principally amongst the children. Mrs. Gass told men to their faces that the fever had come of nothing but famine and poverty, and that they had only themselves to thank for it. She was in the habit, as the reader knows, of dealing some home truths out to them: but she had dealt out something else during the sickness, and that was wholesome food. She continued to do so still to those who had been weakened by it: but she gave them due warning that it was only temporary help, which, but for the fever, they would never have received from her. And so the visitation grew into a thing of the past, and Dallory was itself again. One, there was, however, who could not forget: with whom that unhappy past was present night and day. Jelly. That Dr. Rane had in some way wilfully caused the death of his wife, Jelly was as sure of as though she had seen it done. Her suspicion pointed to laudanum; or to some equally fatal preparation. Suspicion? Nay, with her it had become a certainty. In that last day of Bessy Rane's life, when she was described as sleeping, sleeping, always sleeping; when her sole cry had been--"I am easy, only let me sleep," Jelly now felt that Dr. Rane knew she had been quietly sleeping away to death. Unerringly as though it had been written with the pen of truth, lay the conviction upon her heart. About that, there could be neither doubt nor hesitation: the difficulty was--what ought to be her own course in the matter?