"Excuse me, Miss, you wouldn’t allow me, so I am bound not to ask you. You know you came in dead against my will, and dead against all orders"--this was what the whispering had been about--"and if anything happens to you, Miss Vaughan, who is to have all the property, but that bad Mrs. Daldy?" Oh! In a moment I saw the whole; though it was too black for belief, blacker than any fever that festers the human heart. This was the purpose with which that woman had sent for me. She had lied to me as to the character of the disease. She had opposed me, because she knew it the surest way to urge me. She had brought me too at night, when fevers are doubly infectious. "You see, Miss, we are forced to keep the three windows open, and the passage doors all closed. It’s a wonder I had any of the fluid left, for they never sent it up this afternoon; but I had a drop put by, no thanks to them for the same. Mrs. Daldy brought the first nurse, but she ran clean away when the fever took the turn; and they were forced to send for me, for nobody else would come near him. But my poor old man has no work, and I’ve minded as bad a case as this, and they say I be fever-proof. But you, Miss, you; I should never forgive myself, if anything happened to you, and in your youth and bloom. Though I could not stop you, you know I did my best. And they say you catch things most when you come off a journey." "Jane, whatever happens, you are not to blame. I have no fear whatever; and now I am here, I will stay. It is safer so, both for myself and others." "Well, Miss, so I have heard say. Once in for it, keep to the air. But come into this little room, if you want to talk to me, Miss. We can hear the poor gentleman move, or even sigh; and the air is a little fresher there. But we must keep the window open." She led me into the dressing room; but even there the same crawling creeping smell pervaded, as if a grave had been opened, when the ground was full of gas. Instead of talking to the nurse, I began to think. It broke upon me vaguely, that I had heard of some very simple remedy for a fever of this nature, and that my dear mother, who in her prosperous times was the village doctoress, had been acquainted with the case. But in the whirl of my brain, I could not bring to mind what it was. Oh what would I give, only to think of it now! Though not, I am sorry to say, at all of a pious turn (at least if Mrs. Daldy is so), in the strong feeling of the moment, I fell upon my knees, and prayed for help. So had my mother taught me, and Mother Nature taught me now. I will not be so daring as to say that my prayer was answered. Perhaps it was only that it calmed my mind. "Jane, have they been brewing lately?" Alas the bathos! But I can’t help it. "Yes, Miss; last Thursday and Friday. They won’t let me go near the kitchen part: but I know it all the same." "Go and get me a nice jug of fresh yeast. I will watch your master."