Meanwhile, Isobel had other things to occupy her. Her mother, as she had said in the letter which Mr. Knight’s sense of duty compelled him to steal, became very ill with lung trouble. The doctors announced that she ought to be taken to Egypt or some other warm climate, such as Algeria, for the winter months. Sir John would hear nothing of the sort. For years past he had chosen to consider that his wife was hypochondriacal, and all the medical opinions in London would not have induced him to change that view. The fact was, as may be guessed, that it did not suit him to leave England, and that for sundry reasons which need not be detailed, he did not wish that Isobel should accompany her mother to what he called “foreign parts.” In his secret heart he reflected that if Lady Jane died, well, she died, and while heaven gained a saint, earth, or at any rate, Sir John Blake, would be no loser. She had played her part in his life, there was nothing more to be made of her either as a woman or as a social asset. What would it matter if one more pale, uninteresting lady of title joined the majority? Isobel had one of her stormy interviews with Sir John upon this matter of her mother’s health. “She ought to go abroad,” she said. “Who told you that?” asked her father. “The doctors. I waited for them and asked them.” “Then you had no business to do so. You are an impertinent and interfering chit.” “Is it impertinent and interfering to be anxious about one’s mother’s health, even if one is a chit?” inquired Isobel, looking him straight in the eyes. Then he broke out in his coarse way, saying things to his daughter of which he should have been ashamed. She waited until he ceased, red-faced, and gasping, and replied: “Were it not for my mother, whom you abuse, although she is such an angel and has always been so kind to you, I would leave you, Father, and earn my own living, or go with my uncle Edgar to Mexico, where he is to be appointed Minister, as he and Aunt Margaret asked me to. As it is I shall stop here, though if anything happens to Mother, because you will not send her abroad, I shall go if I have to run away. Why won’t you let her go?” she added with a change of voice. “You need not come; I could look after her. If you think that Egypt or the other place is too far, you know the doctors say that perhaps Switzerland would do her good, and that is quite near.” He caught hold of this suggestion, and exclaimed, with a sneer: