The last-mentioned interview between Lord Caterham and his mother, though productive of good in a certain way--for Lady Beauport, however bravely she succeeded in bearing herself at the time, was in reality not a little frightened at her son's determination--had a visibly bad effect on Caterham's health. The excitement had been too much for him. The physician had enjoined perfect rest, and an absence of all mental effort, in the same way in which they prescribe wine and nourishing food to the pauper, or Turkish baths to the cripple on the outskirts of Salisbury Plain. Perfect rest and absence of all mental effort were utterly impossible to Caterham, whose mind was on the rack, who knew that he had pitted himself against time for the accomplishment of his heart's desire, and who felt that he must either fulfil his earnest intention, or give up it and life simultaneously. Life was so thin and faint and feeble within him, that he needed all of it he could command to bear him up merely through "the fever called living,"--to keep him together sufficiently to get through the ordinary quiet routine of his ever-dull day. When there was an exceptional occasion--such as the interview with his mother, for instance, where he had gone through a vast amount of excitement--it left him exhausted, powerless, incapable of action or even of thought, to an extent that those accustomed only to ordinary people could never have imagined. The next day he was too ill to leave his bed; but that made little difference to the rest of the household. Lord Beauport was away in Wales looking after some mines on one of his estates, which had suddenly promised to be specially productive. Lady Beauport, detained in town for the due carrying out of her plans with respect to Lionel, sent down her usual message of inquiry by Timpson, her maid, who communicated with Stephens, and gave the reply to her mistress. Lady Beauport repeated the message, "Very unwell indeed, eh?" and adding, "this weather is so horribly depressing," proceeded with her toilette. Miss Maurice sent grapes and flowers and some new perfume to the invalid; and--it revived him more than any thing else--a little hurried note, bidding him not give way to depression, but rouse sufficiently to get into his easy-chair by the morrow, and she would spend all the day with him, and read to him, and play to him whatever he wanted.