‘Charity begins at home,’ Oliver told himself, using the proverb in a sense which satisfied him, when he reckoned up the damage to his own prospects, of leaving the mill and bakehouse in the charge of a dolt like Ned Green, and a foreman thirty years younger and a whole century less acute and discreet than Jim Hull. ‘I have always desired to be kept from developing into a monster, made up of theories like Maximilian Robespierre,’ he assured himself farther, with a faint smile; ‘and no doubt it is the finest thing which can happen to me—myself, to be forced to skedaddle across the Channel, and potter about foreign towns with Fan and her small family. It will knock the starch out of me in no time, and take me down ever so many pegs in my priggishness.’ The sum of Oliver’s project for the Stanhopes, in the meantime, was to cut off Harry from his moorings and their tendencies, to furnish him with the substitutes of movement and variety, to afford Fan the change, rest, and recruiting of which she was sorely in need, till something more effectual should be devised to rebuild the ruined home, and replace the lost opportunities. It was a humble enough programme, not very interesting and exciting, save for the main thread of the drama, on which all the rest hung, and on which the performers were shamefacedly silent. Most people have experienced the peculiar fascination and absorption which is caused by dangerous illness in a family, when the whole interests of life centre in the sick-room and its bulletins. All outside matters, though they might formerly have been regarded as of vital moment, dwindle into insignificance, until the wide world with its empires and peoples, tottering republics and falling thrones, and nations wresting their liberties at the expense of bloody battles in which men by thousands perish uncounted, scarcely noticed—are blotted out for the time by a few feet of flooring and ceiling, a single bed, one figure lying still with half-closed eyes and half-parted lips, faintly beating heart and fluttering breath. Harry Stanhope had acquired, as his companions knew, the taint of a grievous disease, half physical, half spiritual, which may rank with the plague and cholera among moral maladies. So to watch stealthily his symptoms, note the changes in his state, chronicle with trembling hope his progress in throwing off the deeply injected poison, or to recognise with sinking heart its fresh outbreak and farther spread through the system, laid hold upon and monopolised the thoughts of the little party of which Harry was the half-unconscious sick man, till he engrossed them more and more, as the combat thickened, and final victory or defeat drew nearer and nearer.