"Oh, don't you begin to `my lady' it over me." Nurse Elisia changed colour a little, and darted a penetrating look at the speaker, but her countenance resumed its old calm directly, and she went on firmly. "Take my advice, Maria; now do as I tell you. Never mind about the work--I will do what is necessary myself. Go up to your bedroom and lie down for an hour, till you have grown calm and cool." "I shan't," cried Maria, with the passionate utterance of an angry child; "and I won't stop in a house where--where,"--there was a hysterical outburst of sobbing here--"such goings on--and I'll take my month." "Let me take you up to your room." "No, no! I won't go. I--oh, oh, oh!" But the strong will prevailed over the weak, and Maria suffered herself to be led along the corridor till, a figure approaching at the end, she cried spitefully through her sobs: "Of course, I know. To get me out of the way. Oh, I'm not blind." Nurse Elisia's hand fell from the woman's arm as if it had been a gymnotus, and there was an indignant look in her eyes as they met Neil Elthorne's searchingly, in fear lest he had heard the malignant utterance. "What is the matter?" he said. "Why, Maria, I thought you were so much better." "It is a little hysterical attack," said the nurse quietly. "I was advising her to go and lie down, sir." "Yes, of course," said Neil quickly, as he caught the woman's wrist. "Go and lie down at once. You must not give way to that sort of thing, Maria. You are not quite yourself yet." "I--I'm better, now, sir," she said, as she struggled for the mastery over herself. "No, thank you! I can go by myself." "Oh, yes," she muttered, as she glanced back on reaching the swing-door at the end of the corridor. "I'm not blind. A nice creature!--and him to go on like that. But I've not done yet." CHAPTER THIRTEEN. AUNT ANNE'S RESOLUTIONS. Aunt Anne would not, she said, listen to Maria's tattle, but the woman's words went home. "I suspected it," she said to herself, "and go she shall before matters are worse. It is always the way with these quiet, artful women." So she took up her pen to write to Sir Denton Hayle, but she did not begin, for it occurred to her that if she did write and ask him to recall the nurse, he would immediately communicate with Neil to ask for an explanation, and whether Nurse Elisia had neglected her duties. "And that's the worst of it," said Aunt Anne to herself, "she never has, but has done wonders for poor Ralph." Then it occurred to her also that, though Neil was only her nephew, he was fast rising into the position of an eminent surgeon, and that in such a case as this she would not have dared to interfere if he had been someone else.