The great house was quiet as the grave; the three guests had departed, little Geoff had been carried away by the vicar's wife to the refuge of her own full, healthful nursery. The boy was shocked and silenced by the thought of his brother's danger, but at five years of age a continuance of grief is as little to be expected as desired, and nothing could be left to chance. A cry beneath the window, a sudden, unexpected noise might be sufficient to turn the frail balance. Pixie was alone, more helplessly, achingly alone than she had been in her life. The doors of the sickroom were closed against her. Joan had no need of her. Joan wanted Geoffrey--Geoffrey, only--Geoffrey alone to herself. Even Bridgie's telegraphed offer had been refused. "Not now! No. Don't let her come--later on," Esmeralda said, and turned restlessly away, impatient even of the slight interruption. If it had been an ordinary, middle-class house, wherein sudden illness brings so much strain and upset, Pixie would have expended herself in service, and have found comfort in so doing, but in the great ordered house all moved like a well-oiled machine. Meals appeared on the table at the ordinary hours, were carried away untouched, to be replaced by others equally tempting, equally futile. Banks of flowers bloomed in the empty rooms, servants flitted about their duties; there was no stir, no stress, no overwork, no need at all for a poor little sister-in-law; nothing for her to do but wander disconsolately from room to room, from garden to garden, to weep alone, and pour out her tender heart in a passion of love and prayer. "Christ, there are so many little boys in your heaven--leave us Jack! God, have pity on Esmeralda! She's his mother. ... _Her beloved son ... Must he go_?" The silent house felt like a prison. Pixie opened a side door and crept out into the garden. The sun was shining cloudlessly, the scent of flowers hung on the air, the birds sang blithely overhead; to a sorrowful heart there seemed something almost brutal in this indifference of Nature. How could the sun shine when a little innocent human soul lay suffering cruel torture in that upper room?