Nurse Mordaunt was an excellent companion, but after a while she began to droop and pine. She wanted the fresh air; she wanted to see her grandchildren; she wanted, oh, imperiously beyond description! a talk, a gossip, a little human intercourse with some one of her own kind. Lady Jane was a darling--the sweetest of ladies; but it was a different thing talking to that angel and chatting familiarly over things in general with Mrs Jarvis. Nurse no more than other mortals could be kept continuously on the higher level. She longed to unbend, to be at her ease, to feel herself, as the French say, _chez elle_, in which expression there is almost a more intimate well-being than in that of being at home, which we English think so much superior. Her health suffered, which Lady Jane would not allow that hers did; and at last, Nurse Mordaunt made such strenuous representations on the subject to the new servant, whose business it was to watch over the prisoners, that she was allowed to go out. She was allowed to go out and the Duchess to come in, two proceedings altogether contradictory of the spirit of the confinement, and which were, indeed, a confession of failure, though the Duke himself was unaware of it. This made a great change to the prisoner, whose cheeks, though still pale, got a little tinge of colour and hope in consequence. It did more for her than merely to bring her her mother’s society, though that was much. It brought her also other news of the outer world--news of Winton more definite than the distant sight of him riding or walking through the Square, which he did constantly. Now, at last, she received the budget of letters, of which her mother’s hands were full. Lady Jane smiled and cried a little at the entreaties her lover addressed to her to be steadfast--not to give him up. “I wonder what they all think,” she said; “is this an argument likely to convince one’s reason, mother, or to persuade one for love’s sake?” She looked round upon her prison--her pretty chamber furnished with every luxury--and laughed a little. “Is it my head or my heart that is appealed to?” she said. This, perhaps, was too clear-sighted for the angelic point of view from which the world in general expected Lady Jane to view most matters. But, in fact, though she had more poetry in her than her mother, Lady Jane had come into possession of part of her mother’s fortune, so to speak, her sense; and that is a quality which will assert itself. Now the Duchess, in the excitement of standing by helpless while her daughter suffered, had come to regard the matter more melodramatically than Lady Jane did, to suffer her feelings to get the mastery, and to imagine a hundred sinkings of the heart and depressions of the spirit to which the captive must be liable. She recognised the change instinctively, for it was one which had taken place long ago in herself. She, too, had been brought to see the paltriness of many