Towler had a hard time of it, following his charge here and there, waiting upon him, bearing his abuse; but Towler had a peculiar gift, a faculty for getting on with patients of this kind. He knew how to dodge, and follow, and circumvent them; how to take liberties with them, and scold them, without too deeply wounding their _amour-propre;_ how to humour and manage them; and although Mr. Wendover quarrelled with his attendant fifty times a day, he yet liked the man, and tolerated his presence; and had already come to lean upon him, and to be angry when Towler absented himself. 'Well,' said Brian, looking up as Ida entered his room on that happy morning on which she had been told that her brother was out of danger--'the boy is better, I hear?' These things are quickly known in a household, when there has been general anxiety about the issue of an illness. 'Yes, he is better. By God's grace, he will live; but his life has trembled in the balance. Brian, it would have been your fault if he had died.' 'Would it? Yes, I suppose indirectly I should have been the cause. I was a fool to take him out that morning; but,' shrugging his shoulders, 'I wanted a ramble, and I wanted company. Who could tell there would be such a diabolical storm, or that we should lose our way? Thank God he is out of danger. Poor little beggar! Did you think I wanted to put him out of the way?' he asked, suddenly, looking at her with a keen flash of interrogation. 'To think that would be to think you a murderer,' she answered, coldly. 'I have thought that you had little affection for him or for me when you exposed him to that danger; and then I schooled myself to think better of you--to remember that, perhaps, on that day you were hardly responsible for your actions.' 'In fact, that I was a lunatic,' said Brian. 'I would rather think you mad than wicked.' 'Perhaps I am neither. Why have you put that man as a spy upon me?' The discreet Towler had retired into the adjacent bedroom during this conversation. 'He is not a spy. Dr. Mallison said you ought to have a servant specially to wait upon you, that in your sleepless nights you might not be left alone.' 'No, they are a trial, those long nights. Towler is not a bad fellow, but he irritates me sometimes. Last night he let a black-muzzled gipsy brute hide behind my curtains, and then told me it was my "delusions." Delusions! when I saw the fellow as plain as I see you now.' Ida was silent. She had hoped that the patient had passed this stage, and was on the road to recovery of health and reason. She interrogated Towler by-and-by, and he assured her that Mr. Wendover had taken no stimulants since he had been attending upon him. 'Are you sure he cannot get any without your knowledge?' Ida asked. 'Dr. Mallison told me that in this malady a patient is terribly artful--that he will contrive to evade the closest watchfulness, if it is any way possible to get drink.'