The door of the dressing-room was locked, and it was some minutes before I was admitted, and during those minutes, my alarm had time to cool, and when at last I entered the room, it was with a full recollection of the last rebuff I had received when I pleaded Esther's cause, and a cold determination to do my duty and no more. "Why are you not dressed, if you intend accompanying us?" she said. "I do not intend going this evening," I answered; "and I came, Aunt Edith, to say that I think you had better see Esther before you go out; she has a great deal of fever, and is very much excited." I never before had realized how dangerous a thing it was to touch with even the daintiest hand, the festering wound that both pride and remorse conspire to hide from the sight even of the sufferer's self. I could not have done anything worse for poor Essie's cause, than just what I did do, and she shared with me in the feeling of vexation and resentment that my words awakened in her mother's breast. I soon forgot the severity of the rebuff I had received, however, when coming into the nursery, I took the struggling child from Félicie, and watched with anxiety the gradual subsiding of the fit of passion that had convulsed her. From whatever cause it might be, she was evidently growing quieter, and in less than half an hour, the little head on my arm had relaxed its tossings, and sunk into repose, while a dreamy languor dulled the wildness of her eyes, and save when the slightest movement woke an alarm that I would leave her, she lay quite motionless. "She is better now," said Félicie, in a low tone, who was watching her with her basilisk eyes as she lay apparently sleeping. A nervous tightening of the slight fingers on my wrist at the sound of her voice, showed me that it was only apparently. When Mrs. Churchill had completed her toilette, she came upstairs. Esther, with her long eyelashes sweeping her crimsoned cheeks, lay so quiet that there seemed some reason in her mother's cutting rebuke for the unnecessary alarm I had given her. I began to feel heartily ashamed of it myself, and wondered that I had been so easily frightened. Félicie, with a wicked look of exultation, said, that if Miss Esther hadn't been in a passion, she wouldn't have brought the fever on again. She had been better all day, the doctor had said she had scarcely any fever, when he was here.