When the doctor was gone Letitia followed him out of the room and went to the schoolroom, which was quite cool and empty. She sat down upon the sofa which had supported Mar’s languid limbs so long, and looked round her as if upon a new world. Her whole being was filled with excitement which threatened to burst all bounds. She felt as if she must have burst forth in laughing or in crying, and if she did not do so it was because the influence of conventional rules and common decorum are too strong to be broken. Every pulse was going like the wheels of a steam engine, and her heart thumping like the great piston that keeps all in motion. Was it anxiety and alarm for Mar that roused that tremendous tumult in her brain? It is to be supposed that she thought so, or tried to make herself think so for the moment. But she knew very well that this was only a gloss forced by a horrified consciousness upon her, and that in the bottom of her heart it was a sudden and dreadful hope which had sprung up in her mind. The child had been so delicate all his life, one whom all the gossips declared she would never rear; and this had left a vague anticipation as of something she could not prevent, which would be good for them all if it came, modified by a fear of what might be said should it happen in her house, which kept Letitia always uneasy, and dictated those precautions which were half regard for other people’s opinion, and half terror of herself. But Mar, though he had been so delicate, had kept, perhaps for that very reason, curiously free of the usual ailments of childhood. When he had them he had them in the lightest form. Never before had this delicate boy, this interloper who stood between Letitia and so many advantages, this child who everybody prophesied could not live--never before had he visibly hung between life and death. Typhoid fever! It was a name to chill the blood in the veins of loving parents, of anxious friends. It made Letitia’s blood boil with a fever of impatience, of desire, of horrible eagerness, at which she was terrified, but which she could not restrain. It was not her fault. She had done nothing to bring it about. He had got the poison out of her house because of his own childish imprudence, exposing himself as she never would have allowed him to expose himself. Letitia’s conscience was quite clear, and nobody could blame her. And he would die--a creature so fragile, with so little life in him, no constitution to fall back upon: there was no fear of a long and terrible illness: a fever that sucked the strength away, and killed the strongest men, would not last long in such a case as this. He would die. She gasped with sensations unspeakable, and felt as if she could not get her breath. He would die. The obstacle would be taken away from her path, from John’s, from Duke’s, and nobody could say that she had done it, or was in any way to blame. What a thought to invade and fill her whole consciousness, all