The application was used, and the evening went on. The child had fallen into a sort of stupor, and Mr. Brook came in again before he had been away an hour, and leaned anxiously over the patient. He lay with his eyes half-closed, and breathed with difficulty. "I think," he exclaimed softly, "there's the slightest shade of improvement." "In the fever, or the throat?" whispered Lady Hartledon, who had not quitted the boy's bedside. "In the throat. If so, it is due to your remedy, Lady Hartledon." "Is he in danger?" "In great danger. Still, I see a gleam of hope." After the surgeon's departure, she went down to her husband, meeting Hedges on the stairs, who was coming to inquire after the patient for his master, for about the fiftieth time. Hartledon was in the library, pacing about incessantly in the darkness, for the room was only lighted by the fire. Anne closed the door and approached him. "Percival, I do not bring you very good tidings," she said; "and yet they might be worse. Mr. Brook tells me he is in great danger, but thinks he sees a gleam of hope." Lord Hartledon took her hand within his arm and resumed his pacing; his eyes were fixed on the carpet, and he said nothing. "Don't grieve as those without hope," she continued, her eyes filling with tears. "He may yet recover. I have been praying that it may be so." "Don't pray for it," he cried, his tone one of painful entreaty. "I have been daring to pray that it might please God to take him." "Percival!" she exclaimed, starting away from him. "I am not mad, Anne. Death would be a more merciful fate for my boy than life. Death now, whilst he is innocent, safe in Christ's love!--death, in Heaven's mercy!" And Anne crept back to the upper chamber, sick with terror; for she did think that the trouble of his child's state was affecting her husband's brain. CHAPTER XXXVII. A PAINFUL SCENE. Lord and Lady Hartledon were entertaining a family group. The everlasting dowager kept to them unpleasantly; making things unbearable, and wearing out her welcome in no slight degree, if she had only been wise enough to see it. She had escaped scarlet-fever and other dreaded ills; and was alive still. For that matter, the little Lord Elster had come out of it also: _not_ unscathed; for the boy remained a sickly wreck, and there was very little hope that he would really recover. The final close might be delayed, but it was not to be averted. Before Easter they had left London for Hartledon, that he might have country air. Lord Hartledon's eldest sister, Lady Margaret Cooper, came there with her husband; and on this day the other sister, Lady Laura Level, had arrived from India. Lady Margaret was an invalid, and not an agreeable woman besides; but to Laura and Anne the meeting, after so many years' separation, was one of intense pleasure. They had been close friends from childhood.