Sir Lionel had been taken to the inn, where Lady Dudleigh waited on him. After some time he recovered his senses, and began to rally rapidly. It had been feared that it was apoplexy, but, fortunately for the sufferer, it turned out to be nothing so serious as that. After this Lady Dudleigh was left alone with her husband. Ten years of separation lay between these two--a separation undertaken from causes that still existed to alienate them beyond the hope of reconciliation. Yet there was much to be said; and Lady Dudleigh had before her a dark and solemn purpose. On the next day Sir Lionel was able to drive out. Lady Dudleigh seemed to have constituted herself his guardian. Sir Lionel's face and expression had changed. The easy, careless bonhomie, the placid content, the serene joyousness, that had once characterized him, were gone. In the place of these there came an anxious, watchful, troubled look--the look of a mind ill at ease--the furtive glance, the clouded brow. It was as though in this meeting Lady Dudleigh had communicated to her husband a part of that expression which prevailed in her own face. Sir Lionel seemed like a prisoner who is attended by an ever-vigilant guard--one who watches all his movements, and from whom he can not escape. As he rolled along in his carriage, the Black Care of the poet seemed seated beside him in the person of Lady Dudleigh. While Sir Lionel thus recovered from the sudden shock which he had felt, there was another who had endured a longer and severer course of suffering, and who had rallied for a moment when his presence was required, but only to sink back into a relapse worse than the illness from which he had begun to recover. This was Frederick Dalton, who had crawled from his bed twice--once to his daughter's prison, and once to the scene of her trial. But the exertion was too much, and the agitation of feeling to which he had been subject had overwhelmed him. Leaning heavily on Dudleigh, and also on Edith, he was taken by these two to his carriage, and thence to the inn; but here he could walk no further. It was Dudleigh who had to carry him to his room and lay him on his bed--and Dudleigh, too, who would intrust to no other person the task of putting his prostrate form in that bed. Dudleigh's own father was lying in the same house, but at that moment, whatever were his motives, Dalton seemed to have stronger claims on his filial duty, and Edith had to wait till this unlooked-for nurse had tenderly placed her father in his bed.