For Millicent Hallam, strong in her determination to help her husband, had had to lean on Thisbe's arm as they returned from Sir Gordon's house that day. When she reached Miss Heathery's house she was compelled to lie down on the couch. An hour later she began to talk wildly, and when her father was hastily summoned she was in a high state of fever. This, with intervals of delirium and calmness, had gone on ever since, up to the day of Robert Hallam's trial. On the previous night, as Millicent lay holding her child to her breast--the little thing having been brought at her wish, to bound to the bedside and bury her flushed, half-frightened face in her mother's bosom--a soft tap had come to the door below. Millicent's hearing, during the intervals of the fever and delirium, was preternaturally keen, and she turned to her mother. "It is Mr Bayle!" she said, in a hoarse whisper. "I know now. I understand all. It is to-morrow. I want to know. Ask him." "Ask him what, my darling? But pray be calm. Remember what your father said." "Yes, yes, I remember; but ask him. No; of course he must be there. Tell Christie Bayle to come to me directly it is over--and bring my husband. Directly, mind. You will tell him?" "Yes, yes, my darling," said Mrs Luttrell, with her face working as she moved towards the door. "Stop, mother!" cried Millicent. "Hush! lie still, Julie; mamma is not cross with you. Mother, tell Christie Bayle to bring me the news of the trial the moment it is over. I can trust him. He will," she said to herself with a smile, as her mother left the room, and delivered the message to him who was below. He left soon after, sick at heart, to join Sir Gordon, and together they took their places in the coach, the only words that passed being: "How is she, Bayle?" "In the Great Physician's hands," was the reply. "Man's skill is nothing here." And she of whom they spoke lay listening to the cheery notes of the guard's horn, the trampling of the horses, and the rattle of the wheels, as the coach rolled away, with James Thickens outside, thinking of the horrors of passing the night in a strange bed, in a strange town, and wishing the troubles of this case of Hallam's at an end. The next morning Millicent Hallam insisted upon rising and dressing, to go over to Lindum and be present at the trial. All opposition only irritated her, and at last Thisbe was summoned to the room. "I shall be just outside," whispered the doctor. "It is better than fighting against her." In less than five minutes he was once more by his child's side, trying to bring her back from the fainting fit in which she had fallen back upon the bed, for she had learned her weakness, and her utter impotence to take such a journey upon an errand like that. And then the weary day had crept on, with the delirium sometimes seizing upon the tottering brain, and then a time of comparative coolness supervening.