It was a long time before Agnes could face the light and her sister’s tranquil looks. She went to her room and fell on her knees and prayed with that passionate remonstrance and appeal, and almost reproach, with which we fly to God when He seems about to cut off from us the thing we hold most dear--pleading, putting forth every argument, reasoning with the Supreme Disposer of events, arguing and explaining to Him how it could not, must not be--as we all do, when prayer, which is so often a mere formality, becomes the outcry of mortal disquietude. The tears which she shed, the struggle which she went through, exhausted her so, that for the moment her misery was weakened with her strength. Mary, waiting tranquilly for her downstairs, believed that Agnes had lain down a little, her head being so bad, and approved it as the wisest thing to do. “Don’t disturb Miss Hill, she has a bad headache,” she said. And so Agnes was left alone to have her struggle out. “Are you better, dear?” said Mary, in her quiet voice, when her sister came in, in the twilight, just before dinner. Agnes had changed her dress as usual, and in the dim light it was impossible to see how pale she was, and the signs of trouble in her face. “I have news from Letitia,” said Agnes, “bad news--they have illness at the Park. I think I will go to-morrow, if you can spare me, Mary, and see for myself.” “At the Park?” Lady Frogmore paused with nervous questions on her lips--Was it Duke? Was it anything infectious? Was it----? She paused, and instinct taught her that her sister’s desire to go and see for herself could mean only one thing. The boy---- She never to herself called him anything but the boy, and never thought of him--which she did seldom and unwillingly, never when she could help it--without a strange tremor and sinking at her heart. “Is it----?” she said, but she could not put even that formula or ask, is it he? “Is it--serious?” she added in a very low voice. “I think she thinks he is dying--and she wants no one to come--he has two nurses--and she says she will write if anything happens. If anything happens! Oh, my God, my boy! with no one near him that cares for him. I must go to-morrow, Mary.” Lady Frogmore patted her sister’s shoulder with her hand. Her own child! and yet it was for Agnes that she felt--for her great trouble. “Yes,” she said, “you must go,” with a strange piteous tone which her sister did not understand, and indeed in the throng of her own emotions did not perceive. “She never says a word of sorrow or regret. She is glad, that dreadful woman! Now,” cried Agnes, “it will be all hers, she thinks--there will be no one in her way.” “In her way!” Mary said like an echo. They could not see each other’s faces. “Ah, that was always what I wished,” she said in a subdued tone.