“Is this the new book?” she asked, holding it up. “The very sheets, with precious annotations.” “I mean to take your advice;” and she tucked the little bundle under her arm. I congratulated her cordially, and ventured to make of my triumph, as I presumed to call it, a subject of pleasantry. But she was perfectly grave, and turned away from me, as she had presented herself, without a smile; after which I settled down to my quarto again, with the reflection that Mrs. Ambient was a queer woman. My triumph, too, suddenly seemed to me rather vain. A woman who could n’t smile in the right place would never understand Mark Ambient. He came in at last in person, having brought the doctor back with him. “He was away from home,” Mark said, “and I went after him, to where he was supposed to be. He had left the place, and I followed him to two or three others, which accounts for my delay.” He was now with Mrs. Ambient looking at the child, and was to see Mark again before leaving the house. My host noticed, at the end of ten minutes, that the proof-sheets of his new book had been removed from the table; and when I told him, in reply to his question as to what I knew about them, that Mrs. Ambient had carried them off to read, he turned almost pale for an instant with surprise. “What has suddenly made her so curious?” he exclaimed; and I was obliged to tell him that I was at the bottom of the mystery. I had had it on my conscience to assure her that she really ought to know of what her husband was capable. “Of what I am capable? _Elle ne s’en dottie que trop!_” said Ambient, with a laugh; but he took my meddling very good-naturedly, and contented himself with adding that he was very much afraid she would burn up the sheets, with his emendations, of which he had no duplicate. The doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, and before he came down I retired to my own quarters, where I remained till dinner-time. On entering the drawing-room at this hour, I found Miss Ambient in possession, as she had been the evening before. “I was right about Dolcino,” she said, as soon as she saw me, with a strange little air of triumph. “He is really very ill.” “Very ill! Why, when I last saw him, at four o’clock, he was in fairly good form.” “There has been a change for the worse, very sudden and rapid, and when the doctor got here he found diphtheritic symptoms. He ought to have been called, as I knew, in the morning, and the child ought n’t to have been brought into the garden.” “My dear lady, he was very happy there,” I answered, much appalled.