She told him, truthfully enough, God knows, she would rather save and economize in every possible way, than that Lally should want for the best help money could procure. She said, what also she believed to be a literal fact, that her husband was perfectly well able to afford Mr. Henry’s fees; and she entreated him to allow her to send him whatever sum he had placed in his friend’s hands for attending Lally. And then, almost against her will, but still of necessity, because it was not in her nature to be abrupt or ungracious, she added some words of gratitude for all his kindness to her little girl, and “remained his sincerely,—H. Dudley.” She would not sign herself “Heather,” lest the name should attract his attention, and Mr. Stewart noticed the omission. He knew enough of women to be aware that, when possessed of a pretty or uncommon name, they always write it in full, and he liked Mrs. Dudley too much to believe for a moment she was superior to the little foibles and weaknesses of her sex. “She is a good girl,” he thought, as he replaced her note in its envelope; “I wish she had married any other man than Dudley;” after which mental remark he wrote her a few lines, saying she was quite mistaken in her idea, “that he had not mentioned the question of money in any way to Mr. Henry, and explained that, very possibly, if fees were forced upon his acceptance, the surgeon might feel a delicacy in seeing Lally so frequently as the child’s state of health required. Mr. Stewart added, he trusted he should on his return to town (the letter was dated from Careyby Castle) hear a good account of his little friend.” But, long before Mr. Stewart’s return to London, the temporary improvement in Lally gave place to increased weariness, to weakness worse than pain, to peevish complainings of “being tired, ma, tired;” and then, in despair, Heather looked upon Mr. Henry’s now frequent visits as matters of course, and began to watch his face and ponder his words anxiously and fearfully. She did not know exactly what she dreaded; she could not bear to put it to her own soul that Lally was in danger—that Lally was incurable. She would sit and think, poor weak heart, of those bright sunshiny days at Hastings, when the progress of her child’s disease had stood still, when it even seemed to retrograde and allowed her to play on the sands, and pick up shells among the shingle, and run screaming with delight over the grass; and while she thought, she would persuade herself that change was all Lally needed, that health resided wholly out of town, and sickness solely amongst the wilderness of houses, the labyrinth of streets. That brief reprieve made the subsequent relapse seem all the harder to endure patiently; it was like the hope of a fortune held out to a beggar and then withdrawn, only to plunge him into a deeper and blacker poverty than before.