“Oh! my dear,” she said to Joan, “what is to happen to us all if I go blind? I have a little money put away— about a hundred and fifty pounds, or two hundred in all, perhaps; but it will soon melt, and then I suppose that they will take us to the workhouse; and you know, my dear, they separate husband and wife in those places.” And, quite broken down by such a prospect, the poor little woman began to weep. “At any rate there is no need for you to trouble yourself about it at present,” answered Joan gently, “since Sally helps, and I can do the fine work that you cannot manage.” “It is very kind of you, Joan. Ah! little did I know, when I took you in out of the street that day, what a blessing you would prove to me, and how I should learn to love you. Also, it is wicked of me to repine, for God has always looked after us heretofore, and I do not believe that He Who feeds the ravens will suffer us to starve, or to be separated. So I will try to be brave and trust in Him.” “Ah!” answered Joan, “I wish that I could have your faith; but I suppose it is only given to good people. Now, where is the work? Let me begin at once. No, don’t thank me any more; it will be a comfort; besides, I would stitch my fingers off for you.” Thenceforth Mrs. Bird’s orders were fulfilled as regularly as ever they had been, and as Joan anticipated, the constant employment gave her some relief. But while she sat and sewed for hour after hour, a new desire entered into her mind that most terrible of all desires, the desire of Death! Of Death she became enamoured, and her daily prayer to Heaven was that she might die, she and her child together, since her imagination could picture no future in another world more dreadful than that which awaited her in this. Only once during these months did she hear anything of Henry; and then it was through the columns of a penny paper, where, under the heading of “Society Jottings,” she read that “Sir Henry Graves, Bart., R.N., and his beautiful young bride were staying at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, where the gallant Captain was very popular and Lady Graves was much admired.” The paragraph added that they were going to travel in the Holy Land, and expected to return to their seat at Rosham towards the end of May. It was shortly after she read this that Joan, who from constantly thinking about death, had convinced herself that she would die, went through the formality of making a will on a sixpenny form which she bought for that purpose. To Sir Henry Graves she left the books that he had given her, and a long letter, which she was at much trouble to compose, and placed carefully in the same envelope with the will. All the rest of her property, of any sort whatsoever, whereof she might die possessed it amounted to about thirty pounds and some clothes she devised to Mrs. Bird for the use of her unborn child, should it live, and, failing that, to Mrs. Bird absolutely.