"What is the matter? What are you doing, nurse? I won't be parted from my baby--I won't, I say!" And when, to sooth her, the little thing was again put into her arms, and again turned from her, a frightened expression came into the mother's face. "Am I going to be ill?--is baby--" She stopped; and as nurse determinately carried it away, she attempted no resistance, only followed it across the room with eager eyes. It was the last glimmer of reason there. From that time her, mind began to wander, and before morning she was slightly delirious. Still nobody apprehended danger. Nobody really knew any thing about the matter except nurse, and she, with a selfish fear of being blamed for carelessness, resisted sending for the doctor till his usual hour of calling. In that large house, as in many other large houses, every body's business was nobody's business, and a member of the family, even the mistress, might easily be sick or dying in some room therein, while all things else went on just as usual, and no one was any the wiser. About noon even Elizabeth's ignorance was roused up to the conviction that something was very wrong with Mrs. Ascott, and that nurse's skill could not counteract it. On her own responsibility she sent, or rather she went to fetch the doctor. He came; and his fiat threw the whole household into consternation. Now they knew that the poor lady whose happiness had touched the very stoniest hearts in the establishment hovered upon the brink of the grave. Now all the women-servants, down to the little kitchen-maid with her dirty apron at her eyes, crept up stairs, one after the other, to the door of what had been such a silent, mysterious room, and listened, unhindered, to the ravings that issued thence. "Poor Missis," and the "poor little baby," were spoken of softly at the kitchen dinner table, and confidentially sympathized over with inquiring tradespeople at the area gate. A sense of awe and suspense stole over the whole house, gathering thicker hour by hour of that dark December day. When her mistress was first pronounced "in danger," Elizabeth, aware that there was no one to act but herself, had taken a brief opportunity to slip from the room and write two letters, one to her master in Edinburgh, and the other to Miss Hilary. The first she gave to the footman to post; the second she charged him to send by special messenger to Richmond. But he, being lazily inclined, or else thinking that, as the order was only given by Elizabeth, it was of comparatively little moment, posted them both. So vainly did the poor girl watch and wait; neither Miss Leaf nor Miss Hilary came. By night Mrs. Ascott's delirium began to subside, but her strength was ebbing fast. Two physicians--three--stood by the unconscious woman, and pronounced that all hope was gone, if, indeed, the case had not been hopeless from the beginning.