'Oh, Nuttie, I hope not; I don't think I do!' 'If I thought it was doing him any good I should not so much mind,' went on the girl; 'but he is just the same, and I am always thinking of "As the husband is, the wife is--"' 'Hush! hush! You have no right to think in that way of your father. I will not hear it. I have let you say too much already, Nuttie.' Then after a pause she added, gently and wistfully, 'You have been better taught, and are clearer headed than ever I was, my Nuttie, and it is quite right that you should hate what seems evil to you. I can only go on trying to do what seems my duty from day to day. I know,' she added with rising tears, 'that the sin and folly of my younger days worked a difficult position for us both; but we can only act according to our lights, and pray God to direct us; and please--please bear with me, my dear one, if the same course does not always seem right to us both.' Nuttie had never heard her say anything so fully showing that she realised these difficulties, and, greatly touched, she asked pardon, kissed and caressed her mother. There was a calm over them for the next few days, and Nuttie actually refrained from bitter comments when her mother was not allowed to go to evensong on Sunday, on the plea of her being tired, but, as the girl believed, in order that she might read the newspapers aloud. She knew that her silence was appreciated by the way her mother kissed her and called her a dear, good, considerate girl. On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Egremont went away at what was a strangely early hour for the former, Nuttie spending her days at the Rectory. On the Tuesday Blanche went with her little sister and the governess on a shopping expedition to Redcastle, and in relating her adventures on her return, she said, 'Oh, by the bye, I met Annaple in Park's shop!' 'Full of Micklethwayte news, I suppose,' said May. 'Yes, of course. Did you know, Nuttie, that your aunt was ill?' 'No, indeed, I did not. What was the matter?' 'Bronchitis, I believe--brown titus, as Betty Butter calls it.' 'Bronchitis! Oh dear! oh dear! Are you quite sure, Blanche?' 'Oh yes! I am quite certain Annaple said Mark told her that Miss Headworth was laid up with bronchitis.' 'And nobody has written to us all this week!' sighed Nuttie. 'I should think that a sign there could not be much in it,' observed May; 'it may be only a bad cold.' 'But Aunt Ursel had bronchitis four years ago, and was very ill indeed,' persisted Nuttie. 'I'm sure it is bronchitis, and that she won't let Miss Mary write to us.' She was in much distress about it, though May privately told her that she ought to know Blanche's way better than to trust implicitly to any of her reports; and her aunt said much the same thing in more general terms, even proposing that if she did not hear the next morning she should go over to Lescombe to ascertain what Mark had really said.