by which Lady Aurora appealed to him to go downstairs with her. It was only when they stood together in the deserted parlour (it was as if he perceived for the first time what an inelegant odour prevailed there) that he asked, “Is she dying—is she dead?” That was the least the strained sadness looking out from the face of the noble visitor appeared to announce. “Dear Mr Robinson, I’m so sorry for you. I wanted to write, but I promised her I wouldn’t. She is very ill—we are very anxious. It began ten days ago, and I suppose I _must_ tell you how much she has gone down.” Lady Aurora spoke with more than all her usual embarrassments and precautions, eagerly, yet as if it cost her much pain: pausing a little after everything she said, to see how he would take it; then going on, with a little propitiatory rush. He learned presently what was the matter, what doctor she had sent for, and that if he would wait a little before going into the room it would be so much better; the invalid having sunk, within half an hour, into a doze of a less agitated kind than she had had for some time, from which it would be an immense pity to run the risk of waking her. The doctor gave her the right things, as it seemed to her ladyship, but he admitted that she had very little power of resistance. He was of course not a very large practitioner, Mr Buffery, from round the corner, but he seemed really clever; and she herself had taken the liberty (as she confessed to this she threw off one of her odd laughs, and her colour rose) of sending an elderly, respectable person—a kind of nurse. She was out just then; she had to go, for an hour, for the air—“only when I come, of course,” said Lady Aurora. Dear Miss Pynsent had had a cold hanging about her, and had not taken care of it. Hyacinth would know how plucky she was about that sort of thing; she took so little interest in herself. “Of course a cold is a cold, whoever has it; isn’t it?” said Lady Aurora. Ten days before, she had taken an additional chill through falling asleep in her chair, in the evening, down there, and letting the fire go out. “It would have been nothing if she had been like you or me, you know,” her ladyship went on; “but just as she was then, it made the difference. The day was horribly damp, and it had struck into the lungs, and inflammation had set in. Mr Buffery says she was impoverished, just rather low and languid, you know.” The next morning she had bad pains and a good deal of fever, yet she had got up. Poor Pinnie’s gracious ministrant did not make clear to Hyacinth what time had elapsed before she came to her relief, nor by what means she had been notified, and he saw that she slurred this over from the admirable motive of wishing him not to feel that the little dressmaker had suffered by his absence or called for him in vain. This, apparently, had indeed not been the case, if Pinnie had opposed, successfully, his being written to. Lady Aurora