"So their fears have infected you, Mary!" was her salutation, as she looked up from the pillow, and smiled. "Is it not a ridiculous piece of business altogether? As if no one ever had a cough before! Do you know we had half-a-dozen doctors here today?" "Susanne said there had been a consultation." "Yes, I could scarcely help laughing. I told them all it was very ridiculous: that beyond the cough, which is nothing, and a little fatigue from the pain in my side, I was no more ill than they were. Dr. Dorré said it was his opinion also, and that I should outlive them all yet." "I hope and trust you will, Adeline! Is that the nurse?" "A sick-nurse they have sent in. She is English, and accustomed to the disease. Her name's Brayford. You know consumption is common enough in your island." Mary Carr thought then--thinks still--that it was a grievous error, their suffering Adeline to know the nature of the disease they dreaded. It was Madame de Castella who betrayed it, in her grief and excitement. "There is so much more fuss being made than is necessary," resumed Adeline. "They have put a blister on my chest, and I am to lie in bed, and live upon slops. I dislike slops." "Is your appetite good?" asked Mary. "I have not any appetite," was Adeline's reply. "But in illness we fancy many things, and Louise would have brought me up anything I asked for. There's no chance of it, with this nurse here. She seems tiresomely particular, and determined to obey orders to the letter. I asked her, just before you came in, for some wine-and-water, I almost payed for it, I was so painfully thirsty. I could have coveted that three-sous beer some of the English girls at school are so fond of." "Did she let you have it?" "No. She told me she would not give me a drop of wine if I paid her for it in gold. I cried about it, I was so disappointed and thirsty. What with the flurry and excitement there has been all the morning, and,--papa and mamma's anxiety, my spirits were low, and I actually cried. But she would not give it me. She brought me some toast-and-water, and said she was going to make me something nice, better than wine. There she is, coddling at it over the fire--very nice I dare say it _is!_" Mrs. Brayford came forward, and whispered Miss Carr to take her leave. Talking was bad for Mademoiselle de Castella. "Farewell, dearest Adeline! I shall soon come to see you again. I know I shall find you better." She was halfway across the room when Adeline called to her. The nurse, who was again leaning over her saucepan, looked up, a remonstrance in her eye if not on her tongue, but Miss Carr returned. "Mary," she whispered, "go in to mamma, assure her, _convince_ her, that I am not so ill as she fears: that it is her love for me which has magnified the danger." "Oh, it's nothing," cried Rose Darling, slightingly, when Miss Carr carried the tale of Adeline's illness back to school. "She will soon be well." "Or die," said Mary Carr.