"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field, yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature, its more awful dangers." "Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I should have done the same. Nevertheless--and though I have no ill feeling toward them--I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my gratitude if I could." "You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending any of the household to wait on you in my stead." "Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory manner. "Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly. "You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble--which is altogether unavoidable in any sickness--has been, you may believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."