"It was quite time I left the hospital," he thought. "The work there has weakened my nerves, and made me ready to think like this--caused this susceptible state. Quite time I left. It is a kind of disease, and I am glad I am away before I committed myself to some folly. I should look well--I, a man with an advancing reputation--if I were to be questioned by Sir Denton upon what I meant by forgetting myself, and degrading myself by making advances toward one of the nurses. It would come before the governors of the hospital, and I should be asked to resign. I must be worse than I thought. Too much strain. Incipient nerve attacks previous to something more terrible. There," he muttered, as he returned to and resumed his seat, "one never knows what is best for one's self. It was right that I should come away from the hospital, and I am here. Bah! ready in my selfishness to think I am of so much consequence that my poor father was called upon to suffer like this to save me from a folly. Yes; there is no doubt about it," he added, after a pause, during which he sat in the semi-darkness of the bedroom gazing straight before him into the gloom; "I have been too much on the strain. A month or two in this pure air will set me up again, and I shall go back ready to look her calmly in the face as of old, and treat her as what she is--a hospital nurse. You shall not have cause to blush for your son, father," he said in a low whisper as he leaned toward the bed and gently took the old man's hand. "You will have enough to bear without meeting with rebellion against your wishes." He raised the hand to his lips, and then tenderly laid it back on the coverlet, bent over the sufferer, and drew back with a sigh. "It will be a question of time and careful nursing," he said, softly. "There must be no mental trouble to hinder his progress. We must not let him feel his weakness and want of power, or he will suffer horribly. Only a few hours since, and so strong and well; but by management we can keep off a good deal, and we will. My poor old dad!" CHAPTER SEVEN. "JOIN YOUR SHIP AT ONCE." The morning broke warm and bright, but the gloom within the fine old manor-house deepened as the facts became more and more impressed on all these that the master would, if his life were spared, never again be the same. Isabel came softly into the room twice during the night, so silently that Neil, as he sat watching, did not hear her till she touched his arm. She stayed with him for a time, and as they sat together in those solemn hours brother and sister seemed to be drawn more together than before. Not that there had ever been any gap between them, for Neil, partaking more of the nature of their dead mother than Alison, had always been the one to whom Isabel had clung, and whom she had gone to with her troubles when their father was in his sterner and most exacting moods.