Yet again laughter, obstinate and irrepressible, shot often in a jarring streak of inharmonious colour across the sombre fabric of her thoughts. He was not only mad, not only splendid--he seemed both to her--he was absurd too at moments, often when he was with Aunt Maria. Letters came in great numbers, from political followers, from women prominent in society, from constituents, from old Foster and Japhet Williams at Henstead, even from puissant Lady Castlefort; they wondered, applauded, implored, flattered, in every key of that sweet instrument called praise. Quisante read them out, pluming and preening his feathers, strutting about, crowing. He would repeat the passages he liked, asking his wife's approbation; that he must have, it seemed. She gave it with what heartiness she could, and laughed only in her sleeve. Surely a man facing death could have forgotten all this? Not Alexander Quisante. He could die, and die bravely; but the world must stand by his bedside. So till the end, whenever that most uncertainly dated end might come, the old mixture promised to go on, the great and small, the mean and grand, the call for tears and throbs of the heart alternating with the obstinate curling or curving of lips swift to respond to the vision of the contemptible or the ludicrous. But she had her appeal to make, the one thing, it seemed, she could do to put herself at all in the right, the offer she must make, and try to make with a sincerity which should rise unimpaired from the conflicts of her heart. She had caught at coming to Ashwood because she thought she could make it best there, not indeed in the room where she had lied for him, nor by the tree where she had turned to Marchmont in a pang of wild regret, but there, on Duty Hill, where he had won her, had touched his highest, and had seemed a conqueror. She took him there, climbing with him very slowly, very gently; there she made him sit and sat by him. Again it was a quiet evening, and still the valley stretched below; nothing changed here made all the changes of her life seem half unreal. Here she told him he must live, he must be docile and must live. "You may get strong again, but for the time you must do as the doctors say. You ought to; for the little girl's sake, if for nothing else, you ought to. You know you're risking another seizure now, and you know what that might mean." His eyes were fixed keenly on her, though he lay back motionless in weariness. "You ought to live for your daughter." She paused a minute and added, "And some day we might have a son, and you'd live again in him; we both should; we should feel that we were doing--that you were doing--everything he did. I think your son would be a great man, and I should be proud to be his mother. Isn't the hope of that worth something?" He was silent, watching her closely still.