"In bed still! Miss Ethel in bed still!" exclaimed Lady Sarah. She spoke in much anger: for Ethel was wont to be up betimes and in attendance upon Sarah Anne. It was _required_ of her to be so. Throwing on a dressing-gown, Lady Sarah proceeded to Ethel's room. And there she broke into a storm of reproach and anger; never waiting to ascertain what might be the matter with Ethel, anything or nothing. "Ten o'clock, and that poor child to have lain until now with no one near her but a servant!" she reiterated. "You have no feeling, Ethel." Ethel drew the clothes from her flushed face, and turned her glistening eyes, dull last night, bright with fever now, upon her mother. "Oh, mamma, I am ill, indeed I am! I can hardly lift my head for the pain. Feel how it is burning! I did not think I ought to get up." "What is the matter with you?" sharply inquired Lady Sarah. "I cannot quite tell," answered Ethel. "I only know that I feel ill all over. I feel, mamma, as if I could not get up." "Very well! There's that dear suffering angel lying alone, and you can think of yourself before you think of her! If you choose to remain in bed you must. But you will reproach yourself for your selfishness when she is gone. Another four and twenty hours and she may be no longer with us. Do as you think proper." Ethel burst into tears, and caught her mother's robe as she was turning away. "Mamma, do not be angry with me! I trust I am not selfish. Mamma"--and her voice sank to a whisper--"I have been thinking that it may be the fever." The fever! For one moment Lady Sarah paused in consternation, but the next she decided there was no fear of it. She really believed so. "The fever!" she reproachfully said. "Heaven help you for a selfish and a fanciful child, Ethel! Did I not send you to bed with headache last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you feel this morning? I can see what it is; you have been fretting after this departure of Thomas Godolphin! Get up and dress yourself, and come in and attend upon your sister. You know she can't bear to be waited on by any one but you. Get up, I say, Ethel." Will Lady Sarah Grame remember that little episode until death shall take her? I should, in her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Thomas Godolphin. "The dear child told me she did not feel well, but I only thought she had a headache, and that she would perhaps feel better up," were the words in which she related it to him. What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It was true that, in her blind selfishness for that one undeserving child, she had lost sight of the fact that illness could come to Ethel; she had not allowed herself to entertain its probability; she, who had accused of selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to sacrifice herself to her sister; who would have sacrificed her very life to save Sarah Anne's.