“He will not stir for some time. No, I am not going to bed. After I have bathed my face Jane will get me a cup of tea, and I shall go down again. No, I could not sleep. I am better within call, so that if he wants me-- But I could not resist the temptation of coming in to speak to you, Rosalind. I don’t know why--just an impulse. We ought not to do things by impulse, you know, but alas! some of us always do. You will remember, however, if necessary. Somehow,” she said, with a pathetic smile, her lips quivering as she turned to the girl’s eager embrace, “you seem more my own child, Rosalind, more my champion, my defender, than those who are more mine.” “Nothing can be more yours, mother, all the more that we chose each other. We were not merely compelled to be mother and child.” “Perhaps there is something in that,” said Mrs. Trevanion. “And the others are so young; only I of all your children am old enough to understand you,” cried Rosalind, throwing herself into her stepmother’s arms. They held each other for a moment closely in that embrace which is above words, which is the supreme expression of human emotion and sympathy, resorted to when all words fail, and yet which explains nothing, which leaves the one as far as ever from understanding the other, from divining what is behind the veil of individuality which separates husband from wife and mother from child. Then Mrs. Trevanion rose and put Rosalind softly back upon her pillow and covered her up with maternal care as if she had been a child. “I must not have you catch cold,” she said, with a smile which was her usual motherly smile with no deeper meaning in it. “Now go to sleep, my love, for another hour.” In her own room Madam exchanged a few words with Jane, who had also been up all night, and who was waiting for her with the tea which is a tired watcher’s solace. “You must do all for me to-day, Jane,” she said; “I cannot leave Mr. Trevanion; I will not, which is more. I have been, alas! partly the means of bringing on this attack.” “Oh, Madam, how many attacks have there been before without any cause!” “That is a little consolation to me; still, it is my fault. Tell him how unsafe it is to be here, how curious the village people are, and that I implore him, for my sake, if he thinks anything of that, and for God’s sake, to go away. What can we do more? Tell him what we have both told him a hundred times, Jane!” “I will do what I can, Madam; but he pays no attention to me, as you know.” “Nor to any one,” said Madam, with a sigh. “I have thought sometimes of telling Dr. Beaton everything; he is a kind man, he would know how to forgive. But, alas! how could I tell if it would do good or harm?” “Harm! only harm! He would never endure it,” the other said.