"See after Nurse Brayford!" exclaimed Rose, when this item of intelligence reached her ears after the doctors had departed. "It will be of no use, dear Madame de Castella. She went away with my sister, Mrs. Carleton St. John. They are travelling somewhere in Germany. Did I not tell you Charlotte had taken her?" "But has she kept her all this time? The nurse may have returned." "She _may_," replied Rose, speaking slowly in her deliberation. "I don't think she has, though. The last time I heard from London, from mamma, she said she feared dear Charlotte was being tried sadly, for that she never could get a letter from her now. Charlotte was always first and foremost with mamma, the rest of us nothing. It's more than she was with me, though," added Rose, lifting her nose in the air as she shook back her golden ringlets. "A domineering thing!" "If the little child has got better, the nurse may have been dismissed," observed Madame de Castella, who now remembered to have heard the circumstances under which Nurse Brayford had been taken. "But I fear he has not got better," answered Rose. "I fear he is getting worse. Mary Anne said so when she wrote to me. About the nurse we shall see: I hope, for Adeline's sake, she is back again." It should have been mentioned that Signor de Castella had sent an express to the Baron de la Chasse, to arrest his journey to Beaufoy. But he came, nevertheless: much concerned, of course. He saw Adeline for a few minutes in the presence of her mother and aunt. It was on the very day they were to have been married. He was excessively shocked at her death-like appearance--to which there's not the least doubt the sight of himself contributed--but endeavoured to express many a kind hope of her speedy recovery, hinting that he was an interested party in it. "She is very ill!" he exclaimed to Rose, when they met downstairs, before his departure. "Very," lamented Rose. "And to think those beautiful wedding things, that were to have been worn today, are shut up out of sight in drawers and boxes!" "Where's that presuming Anglais?" asked the Frenchman. "Oh, he's gone back to his own country," replied Rose, carelessly. "Ages ago, it seem now. I don't think you and he need have quarrelled over her, Monsieur le Baron." He detected her meaning--that Adeline would not live to belong to either--and he bent his head in sorrow, and stroked his silky yellow moustache, and began to speak in a feeling, thoughtful manner of her illness; of the mischief of the spring which had broken out again, when they had all deemed it cured. _He_ had no idea, and never could have any, that this had been brought on by the misery and emotion that were too great to bear.