This sudden peril to the woman he had loved--to whom he was so closely bound by a tie so binding, so intangible--came upon him as an overwhelming calamity. A sense of guilt, remorse unspeakable, smote his heart. He had grown weary of his bondage; yet the possibility of his freedom appalled him. There was grief, there was horror in the thought of liberty so regained. In this hour of Emily Jerningham’s peril, the man who had loved her forgot everything except that she had been dear to him. The old tenderness was re-awakened in his breast. He forgot her jealousies, her sneers, her caprices, her fretfulness,--everything but the one alarming fact of her illness. He intercepted Dr. Leonards, and obtained from him a clearer statement than the physician had cared to make to Mrs. Colton. The great man admitted that the symptoms were as bad as they could be. “I shall see Mrs. Jerningham again to-morrow,” he said. “If we can get her safely through this crisis, and send her to a warmer climate for the autumn, we may patch her up. But a permanent cure is quite out of the question; _that_ was hopeless from the first.” “From the first? From the time of her first visit to you?” “Yes.” Laurence went back to London sorely distressed. The remorseful sense of shortcoming that oppresses the mourner in every earthly severance weighed heavily upon him. Few and infrequent had been the reproaches that had escaped his lips; but in his heart he had often rebelled against Emily Jerningham’s tyranny. And she had loved him only too dearly; her jealousy, her despotism, had been alike the evidence of that too-exacting affection. Could he be so ungrateful as to revolt against so tender a tyranny, so flattering a despotism? He had rebelled; he had found his chains almost intolerable; and he could not forgive himself this secret treason. For a fortnight he went to and fro between London and River Lawn, neglecting everything, except the indispensable work of his paper, for these daily journeys; but in all those fourteen days he saw neither the invalid nor her faithful nurse, Lucy Alford. He heard from the doctors that Miss Alford’s fidelity was beyond all praise, and from Mrs. Colton he also heard of Lucy’s devotion. For a week the patient continued in extreme danger, then there came a happy change,--nature rallied. At the end of the fortnight the Hampton doctor was triumphant, the London physician gravely satisfied. Mrs. Jerningham was able to come down to the drawing-room, to take a slow turn once a day on the sunlit strip of lawn before the windows, to eat a few mouthfuls of chicken or jelly, with some faint show of appetite. It was settled that she and her aunt should go to Madeira for the autumn and winter, and for the immediate benefit of the sea-voyage, as soon as she could well be moved. “In the meantime I have a little business to arrange,” said Mrs. Jerningham. “Let the business wait till next spring, my dear Emily,” pleaded Mrs. Colton.