“Mary, couldn’t you come away now? The Howards have gone away already, and the Thomsons. And the grass is damp, and the dew beginning to fall.” “Presently,” she said, with another look and nod. And now someone else had got possession of her ear. Agnes went on whispering entreaties; but how was Mary to know there was any urgency in them more than on any other afternoon? She cried at last, in desperation-- “I am ill--I am feeling very ill. For God’s sake, Mary, come away.” Lady Frogmore only waited to hear the last of what the vicar’s wife was saying, and then she rose hastily and drew Agnes’ arm into her own. “My dear,” she said, “why did you not tell me you had a headache before?” CHAPTER XLII. When the ladies got back to the Dower House, Letitia’s letter was awaiting them. Agnes had not known what to say on the way. She had maintained the little fiction of the headache, with which Mary sympathized tenderly, and lay back in the corner of the carriage wondering what she should, what she could do. Endure for this night, at least, that expedient which is always the nearest to a woman, and in the morning on some pretence, with some excuse which did not yet occur to her, go in her own person and see for herself. This was all that Agnes could decide upon. And when she reached home Letitia’s letter was the first thing that met her eye. She devoured it, standing in the hall, while Mary went in. A letter which carries a sentence of death may look as little important as a letter which conveys an invitation to tea, and Mary made no inquiries. That she should pass tranquilly through the hall and go into the drawing-room, while Agnes was reading of her only child’s illness, struck her sister as a hideous cruelty and want of heart. She had said to herself she would disturb Mary no more, she would not attempt to awaken the feeling which had lain so long dormant, which surely was now beyond hope. But it was as a bitter offence and wrong to Agnes when Lady Frogmore went past her with a cheerful word to the maid who came to take her shawl, and a mind entirely at ease while Mar’s fate was being sealed. For Letitia’s letter left very little doubt as to the boy’s fate. “I will let you know if anything happens. That is--” Agnes said to herself, with a gasp of anguish, “if he dies.” Oh heaven! and he might be dying now alone with the trained nurses, nobody near him who loved him! Alas, poor Mar! who was there in the world who loved him? except, perhaps, herself, who had been the only mother his infancy had known, and she was useless to him, unable to do anything for him!