The post has just come in. Clarissa, waking, stretches her arms over her head with a little lazy delicious yawn, and idly turns over her letters one by one. But presently, as she breaks the seal of an envelope, and reads what lies inside it, her mood changes, and, springing from her bed, she begins to dress herself with nervous rapidity. Three hours later, Sir James, sitting in his library, is startled by the apparition of Clarissa standing in the door-way with a very miserable face. "What on earth has happened?" says Sir James, who is a very practical young man and always goes at once to the root of a mystery. "Horace is ill," says Miss Peyton, in a tone that might have suited the occasion had the skies just fallen. "Oh, Jim, what shall I do?" "My dearest girl," says Scrope, going up to her and taking her hands. "Yes, he is very ill! I had not heard from him for a fortnight, and was growing wretchedly uneasy, when to-day a letter came from Aunt Emily telling me he has been laid up with low fever for over ten days. And he is very weak, the doctor says, and no one is with him. And papa is in Paris, and Lord Sartoris is with Lady Monckton, and Dorian--no one knows where Dorian is!" "Most extraordinary his never getting any one to write you a line!" "Doesn't that only show how fearfully ill he must be? Jim, you will help me, won't you?" This appeal is not to be put on one side. "Of course I will," says Scrope: "you know that--or you ought. What do you want me to do?" "To take me to him. I want to see him with my own eyes." "To go yourself?" says Sir James, extreme disapprobation in his tone. "You must be out of your mind." "I am not," returns she, indignantly. "I never was more in it. And I am going, any-way." "What will your father say?" "He will say I was quite right. Dear, _dear_, DEAR Jim,"--slipping her hand through his arm, and basely descending from _hauteur_ to coaxing,--"do say you will take me to him. It can't be wrong! Am I not going to be his wife in a month's time?" Sir James moves a chair out of his way with most unnecessary vehemence. "How that alters the case I can't see," he says, obstinately. "You forsake me!" says Miss Peyton, her eyes filling with tears. "Do. I can't be much unhappier than I am, but I did depend on you, you were always so much my friend." Here two large tears run down her cheeks, and they, of course, decide everything. "I will take you," he says, hastily. "To-day?--The sooner the better, I suppose." "Yes; by the next train. Oh, how obliged to you I am! Dear Jim, I shall never forget it to you!" This is supposed to be grateful to him, but it is quite the reverse. "I think you are very foolish to go at all," he says, somewhat gruffly. "Perhaps I am," she says, with a rueful glance. "But you cannot understand. Ah! if you loved, yourself, you could sympathize with me." "Could I?" says Sir James, with a grimace that is meant for a smile, but as such is a most startling specimen of its class.