"Yes, ma'am, I did. And it was my mistress herself thought of it. When Mr. Close, or Hatch--one of 'em it was, I don't know which--told her they were going to send me for you, she said, 'Let Perry take the carriage.' Oh, ma'am, indeed she is fully as well as she could be: it was only at first that she seemed faintish like." Annabel went back in the carriage at once. I promised to follow her as early in the evening as I could get away. Relying upon the butler's assurance that Mrs. Brightman was not in the slightest danger; that, on the contrary, it would be an illness of weeks, if not of months, there was no necessity for accompanying Annabel at an inconvenient moment. "It is, in one sense, the luckiest thing that could have happened to her," Mr. Close remarked to me that evening when we were conversing together. "Lucky! How do you mean?" "Well, she _must_ be under our control now," he answered in significant tones, "and we were fearing, only to-day, that she was on the point of breaking out again. A long spell of enforced abstinence, such as this, may effect wonders." Of course, looking at it in that light, the accident might be called fortunate. "There's a silver lining to every cloud." Annabel took up her abode temporarily at her mother's: Mrs. Brightman requested it. I went down there of an evening--though not every evening--returning to Essex Street in the morning. Tom's increasing illness kept me in town occasionally, for I could not help going to see him, and he was growing weaker day by day. The closing features of consumption were gaining upon him rapidly. To add to our difficulties, Mr. Policeman Wren, who seemed to follow Tom's changes of domicile in a very ominous and remarkable manner, had now transferred his beat from Southwark, and might be seen pacing before Lennard's door ten times a day. One morning when I had come up from Clapham and was seated in my own room opening letters, Lennard entered. He closed the door with a quiet, cautious movement, and waited, without speaking. "Anything particular, Lennard?" "Yes, sir; I've brought rather bad news," he said. "Captain Heriot is worse." "Worse? In what way? But he is not Captain Heriot, Lennard; he is Mr. Brown. Be careful." "We cannot be overheard," he answered, glancing at the closed door. "He appeared so exceedingly weak last night that I thought I would sit up with him for an hour or two, and then lie down on his sofa for the rest of the night. About five o'clock this morning he had a violent fit of coughing and broke a blood-vessel." "What did you do?" "I know a little of the treatment necessary in such cases, and we got the doctor to him as soon as possible. Mr. Purfleet does not give the slightest hope now. In fact, he thinks that a very few days more will bring the ending." I sat back in my chair. Poor Tom! Poor Tom!