“And you know a lot,” said Duke, “as much as the doctor. God bless you for saying so! But you think that is what he means? And he lies there--and smiles--and thinks--of _that_,” said the young man, with his face full of awe. He set out in all the vigor of his young life in the brightness of the summer day to his light work and boundless amusement with all the world before him--and Mar lying there, smiling, thinking of _that_. Duke felt as if his own lightly beating heart stood still in the poignancy of the contrast. Oh, why could not he give some of his life to help out that flickering existence? He went away feeling that there was a pall over the sunshine, and that nothing would ever be truly bright again. But to be sure that was a mood that could not last. Mrs. Parke had given orders at first that the girls were not to go near the sick room, but she had not thought then how long it would go on, an endless dreadful ordeal. And when they stole in, now Letty, now Tiny, their mother either did not find it out or made no remark. Letitia during all this time of suspense was of a very strange aspect--her husband and her children did not know what to make of her. She talked very little to them; did not interfere with their pursuits as she usually did. She seemed to care for nothing. Naturally there were no guests or entertainments of any kind, and her interest in her household affairs, which was usually so minute and unending, seemed to have faded altogether. She wrote no letters, made no calls, her social life seemed to come to an end. She did not even go to church, which was a habit she had always kept up rigorously. Three or four times a day she went to the sick room for news of the patient, and it was there alone that she seemed to wake up completely. She put the nurses through a catechism of questions. She attended upon the doctor when he came, and listened to everything he said and that was said to him with a hungry curiosity. Her countenance did not vary or betray it. It was known that she was “over-anxious,” that she had always taken a despairing view. When he was pronounced to be a little better there was a little quiver of her head, like an unspoken contradiction; and when he was a little worse a sort of assenting gleam came into her eyes. The nurses did not like her, and answered her questions as briefly as possible. Her determination that everything must go badly irritated the women, who had a natural confidence in themselves and in what their nursing could do, and they both believed that she was more satisfied when the news was bad than when it was good. “She’s not like his mother,” they said between themselves, “and she’s fixed in her mind from the first that this is how it’s to be--as some people would rather see their mother die than be proved wrong in their opinion.” They thought no worse of her than this. As a matter of fact Letitia was very unhappy during this long suspense. She had never anticipated anything of the kind.