“Hush, hush, Peregrine!  I cannot have you talk thus.  If your father had such designs, it would be unworthy of us to favour you in crossing them.”

“Nay, madam, he hath never expressed them as yet.  Only my mother and brother both refer to his purpose, and if I could show myself contracted to a young lady of good birth and education, he cannot gainsay; it might yet save me from what I will not and cannot endure.  Not that such is by any means my chief and only motive.  I have loved Mistress Anne with all my heart ever since she shone upon me like a being from a better world when I lay sick here.  She has the same power of hushing the wild goblin within me as you have, madam.  I am another man with her, as I am with you.  It is my only hope!  Give me that hope, and I shall be able to endure patiently.—­ Ah! what have I done?  Have I said too much?”

He had talked longer and more eagerly than would have been good for the invalid even if the topic had been less agitating, and the emotion caused by this unexpected complication, consternation at the difficulties she foresaw, and the present difficulty of framing a reply, were altogether too much for Mrs. Woodford.  She turned deadly white, and gasped for breath, so that Peregrine, in terror, dashed off in search of the maids, exclaiming that their mistress was in a swoon.

The Doctor came out of his study much distressed, and in Anne’s absence the household was almost helpless in giving the succours in which she had always been the foremost.  Peregrine lingered about in remorse and despair, offering to fetch her or to go for the doctor, and finally took the latter course, thereto impelled by the angry words of the old cook, an enemy of his in former days.

“No better? no, sir, nor ’tis not your fault if ever she be.  You’ve been and frought her nigh to death with your terrifying ways.”

Peregrine was Hampshire man enough to know that to terrify only meant to tease, but he was in no mood to justify himself to old Patience, so he galloped off to Portsmouth, and only returned with the doctor to hear that Madam Woodford was in bed, and her daughter with her.  She was somewhat better, but still very ill, and it was plain that this was no moment for pressing his suit even had it not been time for him to return home.  Going to fetch the doctor might be accepted as a valid reason for missing the evening exhortation and prayer, but there were mistrustful looks that galled him.

Anne’s return was more beneficial to Mrs. Woodford than the doctor’s visit, and the girl was still too ignorant of all that her mother’s attacks of spasms and subsequent weakness implied to be as much alarmed as to depress her hopes.  Yet Mrs. Woodford, lying awake in the night, detected that her daughter was restless and unhappy, and asked what ailed her, and how the visit had gone off.

“You do not wish me to speak of such things, madam,” was the answer.