"You are overworked, sir. You must take some rest" "Rest may be nearer for me than we think, Mark." "O papa, don't!" wailed Sara. "Don't speak so, unless you would break my heart!" Her emotion had become uncontrollable, and the anguish had spoken out. Never until that moment had the prospect of losing her father been brought palpably before Sara, and it was more than she well knew how to bear. In spite of her natural reticence of feeling, of the presence of a stranger, she quite shook with her hysterical sobs. Miss Davenal was frightened, and somewhat indignant: she bent her head forward. "What on earth's the matter with Sara?" "Hush, Aunt Bettina," called out Mrs. Cray. "Don't scold her. Uncle Richard has been talking gloomily. He says he is ill." "Ill! of course he is ill," retorted Miss Bettina, who had contrived to hear. "He won't eat. He is out and about with his patients from morning till night, and then comes in too tired to eat anything. He has not swallowed a couple of ounces of meat all the last week. What can he expect but to be ill? But there's no cause for Sara to burst into a violent fit of crying over it. Will you be so kind as to excuse it, sir?" she added, in her stately courtesy, to the clergyman who was sitting at her right hand. He bowed. A man who has known long-continued adversity can feel for sorrow, and his heart was aching for the grief of the child, and for the serious change he saw in the father, his benefactor. Mark turned to Miss Davenal. "It is just what I say, Miss Bettina, that the doctor is overworked. He wants a week or two's rest." "And what are you good for if you can't contrive that he should have it?" was her answer. "I think you might see his patients for him." "So I could," answered Mark. "Only he won't let me." Sara's emotion was subsiding: she sat very still now, her head a little bent, as if ashamed of having betrayed it; the tears dried upon her cheeks, but an uncontrollable sob broke from her now and then. Dr. Davenal had taken her hand under the table, for she sat next to him, and was holding it in his. "You foolish child!" he fondly whispered. "Papa, if--if anything were to happen to you--if you were to go and leave me here alone, I should die," was the answer, uttered passionately. "Hush, hush! My darling, you and I are alike in the hands of a loving God." She laid her fingers again upon her bosom. How violently it was beating, how difficult it was to still its throbs of pain, she alone knew. "I met that gentleman this afternoon, the connection of Lady Oswald's whom I saw for the first time the day of the funeral," spoke up the clergyman, breaking the silence which had fallen upon the room. "Mr. Oswald Cray." "I met him, too," said the doctor. "It was at your house, Mark. I asked him to come here today, but he declined." "He is gone back to town, I think," said Mark. "He said he was going." "Did you ask him to dine here, Uncle Richard?" cried Leo. "I did, my boy."