There was no need to knock at the low, rude door, for a quick ear within had caught the sound of wheels, most unusual in that lonely spot, and the vicar had scarcely had time to alight, before Mabel was in the arms of her father! CHAPTER XXIX. TWO WORDS. “Teach me to love and to forgive, Exact my own defects to scan, What others are to feel,—and know myself a man!” GRAY. “To lose thee! oh! to lose thee,—to live on And see the sun, not thee! will the sun shine— Will the birds sing—flowers bloom, when thou art gone? Desolate! desolate!” BULWER’S KING ARTHUR. “Oh, I was sure that you would come,—quite sure! And Ida—my own precious Ida!” The poor young girl clung to her sister as if they had been parted for years. “My husband!” exclaimed Annabella, trembling lest terrible news should await her. “He is much the same, but—” “Where is he—I will fly to him; I—” “My dear madam,” said the low voice of a stranger, as a tall, bald gentleman in black came forth from the interior of the cottage, with his finger raised to his lip, “may I request that no sound be uttered—my patient is in a state of high fever.” “I will quietly glide up to his room—” “If, as I suppose, I have the honour of addressing the Countess of Dashleigh, I trust that she will pardon my strictly forbidding any one but Mr. Aumerle and the nurse from entering the chamber of the earl.” “I am his wife!” murmured Annabella hoarsely. “It is impossible,” said Dr. G——, “that you should meet without a degree of excitement which might endanger the life or the reason of my patient. The earl is in excellent hands; his friend, and the skilful attendant whom I have provided, will watch him night and day. If any new face were to be seen, I would not be answerable for the consequences.” Dr. G—— had, of course, read “The Precipice and the Peer,” and naturally concluded that its authoress was the last person who could with impunity be admitted into the sick-room of the excited and fevered patient. From the physician’s decision there was no appeal, though to Annabella it appeared an intolerable sentence of banishment from the place to which both duty and affection called her. Always ready to rush to a conclusion, the unhappy wife was convinced that it was the just resentment of Dashleigh against her, that rendered her of all beings in the world the one whose presence he could not endure. Utterly prostrate and helpless in her sorrow, the countess left to Ida all care for the arrangements of the night. To herself it was nothing where she slept, or whether she ever should sleep again; she was like a flower so crushed and bruised that it will never more unfold its petals to the sun.