It is not to be supposed that Mrs. Willoughby and her daughters still courted their pillows on an occasion like this.  They rose with the others, the grandmother and Beulah bestowing their first care on the little Evert, as if his life and safety were the considerations uppermost in their thoughts.  This seemed so natural, that Maud wondered she too could not feel all this absorbing interest in the child, a being so totally dependent on the affection of its friends and relatives to provide for its wants and hazards, in an emergency like the present.

“We will see to the child, Maud,” observed her mother, ten or fifteen minutes after all were up and dressed.  “Do you go to your brother, who will be solitary, alone in his citadel.  He may wish, too, to send some message to his father.  Go, then, dear girl, and help to keep up poor Bob’s spirits.”

What a service for Maud!  Still, she went, without hesitation or delay; for the habits of her whole infancy were not to be totally overcome by the natural and more engrossing sentiments of her later years.  She could not feel precisely the reserve and self-distrust with one she had so long regarded as a brother, as might have been the case with a stranger youth in whom she had begun to feel the interest she entertained for Robert Willoughby.  But, Maud did not hesitate about complying.  An order from her mother to her was law; and she had no shame, no reserves on the subject of contributing to Bob’s comfort or happiness.

Her presence was a great relief to the young man himself, whom she found in the library.  His assistants were posted without, as sentinels to keep off intruders, a disposition that left him quite alone, anxious and uneasy.  The only intercourse he could have with his father was by means of messages; and the part of the building he occupied was absolutely without any communication with the court, except by a single door near the offices, at which he had stationed O’Hearn.

“This is kind, and like yourself, dearest Maud,” exclaimed the young man, taking the hand of his visiter, and pressing it in both his own, though he strangely neglected to kiss her cheek, as he certainly would have done had it been Beulah—­“This is kind and like yourself; now I shall learn something of the state of the family.  How is my mother?”

It might have been native coyness, or even coquetry, that unconsciously to herself influenced Maud’s answer.  She knew not why—­and yet she felt prompted to let it be understood she had not come of her own impulses.

“Mother is well, and not at all alarmed,” she said.  “She and Beulah are busy with little Evert, who crows and kicks his heels about as if he despised danger as becomes a soldier’s son, and has much amused even me; though I am accused of insensibility to his perfections.  Believing you might be solitary, or might wish to communicate with some of us, my mother desired me to come and inquire into your wants.”