The fame of this letter went abroad, but not a soul knew of the next.  It said:  “My dear Sir, I send you these few scrapes to tell you as Grizel needs cheering up.  Kindly oblidge by finding a way so no more at present.  I am sir your obed’t Serv’t Corp Shiach.”

To his bewilderment, this produced no effect, though only because Tommy never got it, and he wrote again, more sternly, requesting his hero to find a way immediately.  He was waiting restlessly for the answer at a time when Elspeth called on Grizel to tell her of something beautiful that Tommy had done.  He had been very ill for nearly a fortnight, it appeared, but had kept it from her to save her anxiety.  “Just think, Grizel; all the time he was in bed with bronchitis he was writing me cheerful letters every other day pretending there was nothing the matter with him.  He is better now.  I have heard about it from a Mrs. Jerry, a lady whom I knew in London, and who has nursed him in the kindest way.” (But this same Mrs. Jerry had opened Corp’s letters and destroyed them as of no importance.) “He would never have mentioned it himself.  How like him, Grizel!  You remember, I made him promise before he went back to London that if he was ill he would let me know at once so that I could go to him, but he is so considerate he would not give me pain.  He wrote those letters, Grizel, when he was gasping for breath.”

“But she seemed quite unmoved,” Elspeth said sadly to her husband afterwards.

Unmoved!  Yes; Grizel remained apparently unmoved until Elspeth had gone, but then—­the torture she endured!  “Oh, cruel, cruel!” she cried, and she could neither stand nor sit; she flung herself down before the fire and rocked this way and that, in a paroxysm of woe.  “Oh, cruel, cruel!”

It was Tommy who was cruel.  To be ill, near to dying, apparently, and not to send her word!  She could never, never have let him go had he not made that promise to Elspeth; and he kept it thus.  Oh, wicked, wicked!

“You would have gone to him at once, Elspeth!  You!  Who are you, that talks of going to him as your right?  He is not yours, I tell you; he is mine!  He is mine alone; it is I who would go to him.  Who is this woman that dares take my place by his side when he is ill!”

She rose to go to him, to drive away all others.  I am sure that was what gave her strength to rise; but she sank to the floor again, and her passion lasted for hours.  And through the night she was crying to God that she would be brave no more.  In her despair she hoped he heard her.

Her mood had not changed when David came to see her next morning, to admit, too, that Tommy seemed to have done an unselfish thing in concealing his illness from them.  Grizel nodded, but he thought she was looking strangely reckless.  He had a message from Elspeth.  Tommy had asked her to let him know whether the plant was flourishing.

“So you and he don’t correspond now?” David said, with his old, puzzled look.