She was very ill after her confinement, and for several weeks it was doubtful if she would recover. The boy throve, but the mother seemed to be sinking. The local doctor came three times a day, and a physician was called in, and then other consultations were held between the physician and a specialist, and it appeared to Kent that he was never remembered by Mrs. Walford, or the nurse, during this period, excepting when he was required to write a cheque. "You shall see her for a moment by-and-by," one or the other of them would say; "she is to be kept very quiet this afternoon. Yes, yes, now you're not to worry; go and work, and you shall be sent for later on!" Then he would wander round the neglected little sitting-room, and note drearily, and without its striking him that he might attend to them, that the ferns in the dusty majolica pots were dying for want of water--or he would sit down and write, by a dogged effort, at the rate of a word a minute, asking himself anxiously what sum it was safe to expect from Messrs. Cousins. His banking account was diminishing rapidly under the demands made upon it now, and he found it almost as hard to write a chapter of a novel as if he had never attempted to do such a thing before. He returned thanks to Heaven that he was not a journalist, to whom the necessity for covering a certain number of pages by a stated hour daily was unavoidable; but he wished himself a mechanic or a petty tradesman, whose vocations, he presumed, were independent of their moods. It was not till the crisis was past and Cynthia was downstairs again, in a wrapper on the sofa, that he began to feel that he was within measurable distance of the conclusion. The nine months that he had allotted to the task had long gone by, but that it would have taken him a year did not trouble him, for he knew the work to be good. He told her so one afternoon when they were alone together again, she with her couch drawn to the fire, and he sitting at the edge, holding her hand. "I'm satisfied," he declared. "When I say 'satisfied,' you know what I mean, of course? It's as well done as I expected to do it. Another week 'll see it finished, darling." She patted his arm. "Poor old boy! it hasn't been a happy time for him either, has it?" "I've known jollier. But you're all right again now, thank God! and I'm going to pack you off to Bournemouth or somewhere soon, to bring your colour back. I was speaking to Dr. Roberts about it this morning. He says it's just what you need." "I've been very expensive, Humphrey," she said wistfully. "How much? We didn't think it would cost so much as it has, did we? You should have married a big, strong woman, Humphrey, or----" "Or what?" "Or nobody," she murmured. The eyes that she bent upon the fire glittered. He squeezed her hand, and laughed constrainedly.