"What?" screamed Jane, starting to her feet with a shriek that startled even Mrs. Marks, asleep in the room above. "Don't touch me! Don't come nigh me! Stand off! I'm crazed, I tell you, and don't know nothing. Oh! I'm deaf, and didn't hear it! No, no, I didn't hear it! I won't hear it! I'm crazed." "That yer are, yer she devil!" exclaimed Matthew, striding up to where she stood, as it were at bay, before some deadly enemy. "Are these yer manners, when gentry come to visit yer?" and he half thrust, half threw her out on the stairs. "She's crazed, Miss," said Matthew, returning, "and has got one of her fits on her; but she's as harmless as a fly. Don't 'ee cry, young Master," said he to Bertie, who with his arms clasped round Frances' neck, was sobbing violently. "She ain't well neither, Miss," continued he, "I thought, days ago, she were a-going to have the fever." "The fever!" exclaimed Frances, "what fever?" "I don't know, Miss, my wife have been sick of it for days past." "And how dare you!" cried Frances, passionately, seizing him by the arm; "how dare you let the boy come in. Don't you know it is murder. Oh, if he should get it! If he should get it!" and she flew from the cottage, leaving Matthew bewailing his thoughtlessness and folly. Frances disliked children, and had made up her mind to thoroughly hate Amy's child, long before she saw him; but the boy's determined will, so congenial to her spirit, and then his partiality to herself, overcame this resolution. Her object had been to conciliate the father through the boy; but in attaining this object she had taken a liking for the child, which she in vain tried to surmount; Bertie wound himself into that cruel heart, somehow, and held his place there in defiance of all obstacles. Her heart sank within her at Matthew's words, and felt strangely stirred as she drew away the little arms so tightly encircling her neck. "For Heaven's sake, Bertie, don't cry so, you'll make yourself so hot," and then she felt his hands and forehead to assure herself he had not already caught the fever. "She's a naughty woman," sobbed Bertie. "Yes, yes, she's a naughty woman;" and then by dint of coaxing and persuading there was little trace, when they reached Hannah at the further end of the village, of the fright or violent cry he had had; still, his nurse was not to be deceived. "What's the matter with Master Bertie?" she asked. "A poor idiot in one of the cottages frightened him," replied Frances; but she said not a word of the fever, or that the cottage was the one at the turnpike gate, and Bertie's version of the story was a great deal too unconnected to be understood, and merely seemed a corroboration of the one Frances had given. CHAPTER X. DOWN BY THE LAKE. "At length within a lonely cell, They saw a mournful dame. Her gentle eyes were dimm'd with tears, Her cheeks were pale with woe: And long Sir Valentine besought Her doleful tale to know.