“It is just what I have been turning over in my own mind,” replied he. “I don't quite trust him; and, in fact, I'd follow him over to London, if I were free at this moment.” “Perhaps you ought to do so; it might be the wisest course,” said she, hesitatingly. “Do you think I could leave this with safety?” asked he. But she did not seem to have heard the question. He repeated it, and she was still silent. “If the doctors could be relied on, they should be able to tell us.” “To tell us what?” asked she, abruptly, almost sternly. “I meant that they'd know--that they'd perhaps be in a position to judge--that they at least could warn us--” Here he stopped, confused and embarrassed, and quite unable to continue. That sense of embarrassment, however, came less of his own reflections than of the cold, steady, and searching look which his mother never ceased to bend on him. It was a gaze that seemed to imply, “Say on, and let me hear how destitute of all feeling you will avow yourself.” It was, indeed, the meaning of her stare, and so he felt it, as the color came and went in his cheek, and a sense of faintish sickness crept over him. “The post has arrived, my Lady, and I have left your Ladyship's letters on the dressing-table,” said a servant. And Lady Dorothea, who had been impatiently awaiting the mall, hastened at once to her room. CHAPTER XXVI. A LETTER THAT NEVER REACHES ITS ADDRESS It was not without a very painful emotion that Lady Dorothea turned over a mass of letters addressed to her husband. They came from various quarters, written in all the moods of many minds. Some were the mere gossip of clubs and dinnerparties,--some were kindly and affectionate inquiries, gentle reproachings on his silence, and banterings about his pretended low spirits. A somewhat favorite tone is that same raillery towards those whose lot in life seems elevated above the casualties of fortune, forgetting the while that the sunniest path has its shadows, and they whom we deem exempt from the sore trials of the world have their share of its sorrows. These read strangely now, as he to whom they were addressed lay breathing the heavy and labored breath, and muttering the low broken murmurs that prelude the one still deeper sleep!