Wingfold caught sight of him approaching the house, and himself opened the door to him. Taking him to his study, he made him sit down, and offered him a pipe. “Thank you, sir; I don't smoke,” said Richard. “Then don't learn. You are better without it,” answered Wingfold, and put down his own pipe. “I came,” said Richard, “to thank you for your kindness to me, and to ask about Miss Wylder. Not having seen her for a long time, I was afraid she might be ill. I am going away.” There was a tremor in Richard's voice, of which he was not himself aware. Wingfold noted it, pitied the youth because of the fuel he had stored for suffering, and admired him for his straightforwardness. “I am sorry to say you are not likely to see Miss Wylder,” he answered. “Her mother is ill.” “I hardly thought to see her, sir. Is her mother very ill?” “Yes, very ill,” answered Wingfold. “With anything infectious?” “No. Her complaint is as little infectious as complaint could be; it is just exhaustion--absolute prostration, mental and nervous. She is too weak to think, and can't even feed herself. I fear her daughter will be worn out waiting on her. She devotes herself to her mother with a spirit and energy I never but once knew equalled. She never seems tired, never out of spirits. I heard a lady say she couldn't have much feeling to look cheerful when her mother was in such a state; but the lady was stupid. She would wait on her own mother almost as devotedly as Miss Wylder, but with such a lugubrious countenance that her patient might well seek refuge from it in the grave. But it is no wonder she should be in good spirits: it is the first time in her life, she says, that she has been allowed to be of any use to her mother! Then she is not suffering pain, and that makes a great difference. But more than all, her mother has grown so tender to her, and so grateful, following her constantly about the room with her eyes, that the girl says she feels in a paradise of which her mother is the tutelar divinity, raying out bliss as she lies in bed! Also her father is kinder to her mother. Little signs of tenderness pass between them--a thing she has never known before! How could she be other than happy!--But what is this you tell me about going away? The library cannot be finished!” Wingfold had dilated on the worth of Miss Wylder, and let Richard know of her happiness, out of genuine sympathy. He knew that, next to the worship of God, the true _worship_ of a fellow-creature, in the old meaning of the word, is the most potent thing for deliverance. “No, sir,” answered Richard; “the library is left in mid ocean of decay. I don't know why they have dismissed me. The only thing clear is, that they want to be rid of me. What I have done I can't think. There is a little girl of the family--” Here he told how Vixen had from the first behaved to him, and what things had happened in consequence, the last more particularly.