For about an hour I sat by her bed, till her more regular breathing showed me she had dropped off into the sleep of sheer exhaustion. In the morning I sent a note to the vicar by one of the solicitous young men, and by ten o’clock he was in my sitting-room, while the parish nurse was getting Mrs. Cushion’s room ready upstairs. I told the story very briefly, and as far as possible in her own words; and the vicar, who had been sitting at the table facing the light, suddenly got up and stood by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel-shelf, shading his eyes with his hand and almost turning his back upon me. "And if she can’t keep her children, she won’t get well," I concluded. "Of course she must keep her children," he muttered hoarsely. "But what about Mrs. Robinson?" He blew his nose, with his handkerchief all over his face, and then turned on me triumphantly, handing me a letter. "I was coming to you this morning in any case, to show you this. I suddenly decided what to say and thought you’d like to see it. I’m glad I wrote before you told me this. There’s a decisive vagueness about it that will, I know, command your literary respect—if nothing else." This is what he had written: "DEAR MRS. ROBINSON,—Of course you are right. The Caroline Cushion you knew never was married nor had she any children; and she always was, as you charitably supposed, an entirely respectable woman. The confusion arose with Miss Legh and me, and I apologise for the trouble we have inadvertently caused you. Thanking you for so satisfactorily clearing up the matter, I am yours faithfully, "G. W. MOLYNEUX." The parish nurse knocked at the door. "I’ve put her quite straight, Miss Legh, and the doctor said yesterday she can have anything she fancies for her dinner." Up the steep stairs the vicar climbed, pausing at the top to get his breath. Mrs. Cushion was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. She had on her best cap and the gold-rimmed spectacles sacred to Sundays. "Peace be to this house, and all that dwell in it," said the vicar from the threshold. I shut the bedroom door and left them. When the vicar had creaked heavily downstairs again, I went and opened the front door for him. "Poor soul!" he said, "poor, hungry-hearted, loving soul! Do you remember Elia?" And more to himself than to me he murmured, "And yet they are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. They are only what might have been." *VII* *SANCTUARY*