The news of Herbert’s second rally, and the hopeful state in which he was, did not create so great a sensation among his relations as the first had done. The people who were not so deeply interested as Reine, and to whom his life or death was of secondary importance, nevertheless shared something of her feeling. He was no longer a creature brought up from the edge of the grave, miraculously or semi-miraculously restored to life and hope, but a sick man fallen back again into the common conditions of nature, varying as others vary, now better, now worse, and probably as all had made up their mind to the worst, merely showing, with perhaps more force than usual, the well-known uncertainty of consumptive patients, blazing up in the socket with an effort which, though repeated, was still a last effort, and had no real hopefulness in it. This they all thought, from Miss Susan, who wished for his recovery, to Mr. Farrel-Austin, whose wishes were exactly the reverse. They wished, and they did not wish that he might get better; but they no longer believed it as possible. Even Augustine paused in her absolute faith, and allowed a faint wonder to cross her mind as to what was meant by this strange dispensation. She asked to have some sign given her whether or not to go on praying for Herbert’s restoration. “It might be that this was a token to ask no more,” she said to Dr. Richard, who was somewhat scandalized by the suggestion. “If it is not intended to save him, this may be a sign that his name should be mentioned no longer.” Dr. Richard, though he was not half so truly confident as Augustine was in the acceptability of her bedesmen’s and bedeswomen’s prayers, was yet deeply shocked by this idea. “So long as I am chaplain at the alms-houses, so long shall the poor boy be commended to God in every litany I say!” he declared with energy, firm as ever in his duty and the Church’s laws. It was dreadful to him, Dr. Richard said, to be thus, as it were, subordinate to a lady, liable to her suggestions, which were contrary to every rubric, though, indeed, he never took them. “I suffer much from having these suggestions made to me, though I thank God I have never given in--never! and never will!” said the old chaplain, with tremulous heroism. He bemoaned himself to his wife, who believed in him heartily, and comforted him, and to Miss Susan, who gave him a short answer, and to the rector, who chuckled and was delighted. “I always said it was an odd position,” he said, “but of course you knew when you entered upon it how you would be.” This was all the consolation he got, except from his wife, who always entered into his feelings, and stood by him on every occasion with her smelling-salts. And the more Miss Augustine thought that it was unnecessary to pray further for her nephew, the more clearly Dr. Richard enunciated his name every time that the Litany was said. The almshouses sided with the doctor, I am bound to add, in this, if not in the