"Well, Thomas, and how is he?" inquired Mrs. Carnegie in the anxious tone a kind voice takes when asking after the health of a friend who may be in a critical way. Bessie dropped her work and looked from one to the other. The doctor did not answer directly, but, addressing Bessie, he said, "You must not be shocked, my dear, when you see Harry Musgrave." "What is the matter? I have heard nothing: is he ill again?" cried Bessie. "He must never go back to London," said Mr. Carnegie with a great sigh. "Is it so bad as that? Poor Harry!" said his wife in a sad, suppressed tone. Bessie said nothing: her throat ached, her eyes burnt, but she was too stunned and bewildered to inquire further, and yet she thought she had been prepared for something like this. "He asked after you, Bessie, and when you would go to see him," the doctor went on. "I will go now. It is not too late? he is not too tired? will he be glad?" Bessie said, all in a breath. "Yes, he wants to talk to you; but you will have to walk all the way, dear, and alone, for I have to go the other road." "Oh, the walk will not hurt me. And when I have seen him I will go back to Fairfield. But tell me what ails him: has he been over-working, or is it the results of his illness?" Bessie was very earnest to know all there was to be known. "Work is not to blame: the lad was always more or less delicate, though his frame was so powerful," Mr. Carnegie said with gravity. "He is out of spirits, and he has had a warning to beware of the family complaint. That is not to say it has marked him yet--he may live for years, with care and prudence live to a good old age--but there is no public career before him; and it is a terrible prospect, this giving up and coming down, to a young fellow of his temper. His mother sits and looks at him, beats on her knee, deplores the money spent on his college education, and frets; you must try your hand at some other sort of consolation, Bessie, for that will never do. Now, if you are going, my dear, you had better start." Mrs. Carnegie wished she could have offered herself as Bessie's companion, but she would have been an impediment rather than a help, and Bessie set out alone. She had gone that way to Brook many and many a time, but never quite alone before. It seemed, at first, strange to her to be walking across the open heath by herself, and yet she felt, somehow, as if it had all happened before--perhaps in a dream. It was a warm afternoon towards six o'clock, and the August glow of the heather in blossom spread everywhere like a purple sea. At the gate of the Forest Farm the cows were gathered, with meek patience expecting their call to the milking-shed; but after she passed under the shade of the trees beyond Great-Ash Ford she met not a creature until she came in sight of the wicket opening into the wood from the manor-garden. And there was Harry Musgrave himself.