And to be a visitor in the house at such a melancholy moment was most embarrassing. There are some people who have a special knack of mixing themselves up in the affairs of others, and Fairfax was one of these. He was himself strangely isolated and alone in the world, and it seemed to him that he had never found so much interest in anything as in this family story into the midst of which he had been so suddenly thrown. Almost before he had become acquainted with them, circumstances had made him useful, and for the moment necessary, to them. He was an intruder, yet he was doing the work of a son. And then in those long summer evenings which Lady Markham spent in her husband’s sick-room, what a strange charmed life the young man had drifted into! When the children went to bed, Alice would leave the great drawing-room blazing with lights, for that smaller room at the end which was Lady Markham’s sanctuary, and which was scarcely lighted at all, and there the two young people would sit alone, waiting for Lady Markham’s appearance or for news from the sick-room, with only one dim lamp burning, and the summer moonlight coming in through the little golden-tinted panes of the great Elizabethan window. Sometimes they scarcely said anything to each other, the anxiety which was the very atmosphere of the house hushing them into watchfulness and listening which forbade speech; but sometimes, on the other hand, they would talk in half-whispers, making to each other without knowing it, many disclosures both of their young lives and characters, which advanced them altogether beyond that knowledge of each other which ordinary acquaintances possess. Nothing like love, it need not be said, was in those bits of intercourse, broken sometimes by a hasty summons from the sick-room to Alice, or a hurried commission to Fairfax--a telegram that had to be answered, or something that it was necessary to explain to the doctor. In the intervals of these duties, which seemed as natural to the one as to the other, the girl and the young man would talk or would be silent, somehow pleased and soothed mutually by each other’s presence, though neither was conscious of thinking of the other. Alice at least was not conscious. She felt that it was “a comfort” that he should be there, so sympathetic, so kind, ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice; and she had come to be able to say to him “Go” or “Come” without hesitation, and to take for granted his willing service. But it was scarcely to be expected that Fairfax should be unconscious of the strangeness of the union which was invisibly forming itself between them. At first a certain amusement had mixed with the natural surprise of suddenly finding himself in circumstances so strange; but it must be allowed that by degrees Fairfax came to think Sir William’s illness a fortunate chance, and so long as imminent danger was not thought of, had no objection to its continuance.