Mrs. Carruthers turned a face full of distress upon her husband in reply to his kind question. It was deeply flushed for a moment, then it grew deadly pale; her eyes rolled towards George with an expression of doubt, of searching, of misty anguish which filled him with alarm, and she put out her hands with a gesture of avoidance. "O no, no," she said, "I cannot see her yet--I am not able--I don't know--there's something, there's something." It might have struck Mr. Carruthers and Mark Felton too, had they not been too much alarmed to think of anything but Mrs. Carruthers's emotion, that when they both approached her eagerly, George did not attempt to do so. He rose, indeed, but it was to push back his chair and get out of their way. Mr. Carruthers asked her tenderly what was the matter, but she replied only by laying her head upon his breast in a passion of tears. In the evening, when Dr. Merle had seen Mrs. Carruthers, had said a great deal about absolute quiet, but had not interdicted the purposed return to England, when it had been decided that there was to be no leave-taking between her and her brother and son, who were to commence their journey on the morrow, Mr. Carruthers, sitting by his wife's bed, where she then lay quietly asleep, arrived at the conclusion that the old nurse was connected with the "shock." The idea gave him acute pain. It must have been, then, something that had some reference to his wife's past life, something in which he and the present had no share. Very old, and worn, and troubled Mr. Carruthers looked as the darkness came on and filled the room, and once more the night wind arose, and whistled and shrieked over Taunus. He began to wish ardently, earnestly, to get home. It was very strange to look at his wife, always before his eyes, and know she had a terrible secret grief, which had thus powerfully affected her, and not to dare to question her about it. This fresh confirmation of the fact, this new manifestation of her sufferings, after so peaceful an interval, had in it something awful to the mind of Mr. Carruthers. The brother and the son in their different ways were equally disturbed by the occurrence--Mark Felton in his ignorance and conjecture, George in the painful fulness of his knowledge and his self-reproach. And as Mark Felton's look had alone arrested George's impulsive desire to reveal his knowledge of Poynings to Mr. Carruthers, so the remembrance of all Routh and Harriet had said to him of the difficulty, the embarrassment, the probable danger of an acknowledgment, alone arrested his desire to inform his uncle of the dreadful error which had caused his mother's illness.