“I had to line the sleeves of her last dress with wadding,” said the abigail; “such a beautiful arm she had, too, when I first came to her; but she’s been going off gradual-like for the last three years, poor thing! and as to talking to her about her ’ealth, it would be as much as my place is worth, for a prouder lady, nor a more reserved in her ways, I never lived with. You might as well stand behind a statue, and brush _its_ hair, till you’re ready to drop, for anything like conversation you can get out of _her_; and when I think of my last lady--which was a countess, as you know, Wilcox, and the things _she’d_ tell me, and the way she loved a bit of gossip--it turns my blood to ice like to wait upon Mrs. Jerningham. And yet as generous a lady as ever I served; and as kind and civil-spoken, in her own cold way.” Mrs. Jerningham paid several visits to Dr. Leonards; but as she obstinately or apathetically ignored that distinguished physician’s counsels, she was no better for those drives to Great George Street. Laurence questioned her closely as to these interviews, and would fain have questioned Dr. Leonards himself, had his position authorized him to do so. Lucy, who knew absolutely nothing of illness, believed her kind patroness’s cough to be the merest nervous irritation of the throat; nor was Mrs. Colton in any manner alarmed. No one but Mrs. Jerningham herself knew of her feverish nights, and daily hours of suffering and languor, endured in the solitude of her pretty morning-room. Even the patient herself had no apprehension of danger. The languor had crept upon her by such slow degrees, the fever had so long been a chronic disorder. “If I were happy, I should soon be well, I dare say,” she said to herself; “the fever and the weakness are of the mind rather than the body.” In the first week of summer Mr. Desmond gave himself a brief respite from the cares of the _Areopagus_, and secured bachelor lodgings at Sunbury, where he kept his boat, and whence he rowed to and from River Lawn. “And this week you are really going to give to me?” said Mrs. Jerningham. “To you and to Father Thames. I hope you are as fond of the river as you were last summer.” “Oh yes. The river has been my companion upon many a lonely summer day. I have reason to be fond of the river.”