He would not leave the child here to have him wormed into the old man’s affections, made a tool of by Mary in John’s interests, and to his own detriment. He was determined to get rid of Nello, whatever it cost him: not to do him harm, but to get him out of the way. This idea began to possess him like a mania--to get rid of the child who was more dangerous, a great deal more dangerous, than John himself. And all the circumstances of the house favoured his removal at this moment, when the Squire’s illness occupied everybody’s attention. And then it was a great point to have enlisted on his side the reluctant and abashed, yet conscientious support of Mr. Pen. As for the children themselves, a subtle discomfort had stolen into their life. The old gentleman’s illness, though it did not affect them, affected the house. The severe and dangerous illness of an important member of any household has always a confusing influence upon domestic life. It changes the centre of existence, so that everything, which once radiated from the cheerful hearth becomes absorbed in the sick-chamber, making of it the temporary and fictitious centre of the dwelling. In this changed orbit, all the stars of the household firmament shine, and beyond it everything is left cold, and sunless, and neglected. Children are always the first to feel this atmospheric change, which affects them more than it does the watchers and nurses, whose time and minds are absorbed in the new occupation. It was as if the sun had gone out of the sky to the children at Penninghame. They were left free indeed, to go and come as they liked, nobody attempting to hustle them out of the way, to say, “Run, children, some one is coming.” All the world might go and come, and it did not matter. Neither did it matter to them now where they went, for every room was equally dreary and empty. Mary, who meant home to them, and to whom they carried all their grievances and pleasures, had disappeared from their view; and Miss Brown, who was their directress in minor matters, had become invisible too, swallowed up by that sick-room, which absorbed everything. It was no pleasure to roam about the drawing-room, generally forbidden ground, and even through and through the passages from the hall to the dining-room, though they had so often longed to do it, when nobody was to be found there, either to laugh with them, or to find fault. Even Eastwood was swept up in the same whirlpool; and as for Mary, their domestic divinity, all that was seen of her was when she passed from one room to another, crossing the corridor, disappearing within the door of the mysterious chamber, where doctors and nurses, and every sort of medicine, and drinks, and appliances of all kinds, were being taken. How could the old gentleman want so much? Twice over a new kind of bed was taken into that strange gulf of a sick-room, and all so silently--Eastwood standing on the stairs, deprecating with voice and