“And Cecil!”

“Cecil is too much stupefied to know anything about it.”

“You are helping here?  Make me all the use you can.  Whatever has to be done give it to me.”

“Nay, you have your family to consider.”

“My boys are at their grandmother’s.  My husband is gone abroad.  Give me work.  I have brought some wine.  Who needs it most?”

“Wine?” said Herbert.  “Here?  I was going back for some, but half an hour may make all the difference to the poor lad in here.”

Mrs. Duncombe was within the door in a moment.

“There has been an execution in her house,” said Herbert, as they went home.  “That fellow went off on Saturday, and left her alone to face it.”

“I thought she had striven to keep out of debt.”

“What can a woman do when a man chooses to borrow?  That horse brought them to more unexpected smash.  They say that after the ball, where she appeared in all her glory, as if nothing had happened, she made Bob give her a schedule of his debts, packed his portmanteau, sent him off to find some cheap hole abroad, and stayed to pick up the pieces after the wreck.”

“She is a brave woman,” said Julius.

Therewith they plunged into the abodes of misery, where the only other helper at present was good old Miss Slater, who was going from one to another, trying to show helpless women how to nurse, but able only to contribute infinitesimal grains of aid or comfort at immense cost to herself.  Julius insisted on taking home with him his curate, who had been at work from ten o’clock that morning till six, when as Julius resigned the pony’s reins to him, he begged that they might go round and inquire at Sirenwood, to which consent was the more willingly given because poor Frank’s few gleams of consciousness were spent in sending his indefatigable nurse Anne to ask whether his mother had ‘had that letter,’ and in his delirium he was always feeling his watch-chain for that unhappy pebble, and moaning when he missed it.  Mrs. Poynsett’s letter had gone on Friday, and still there was no answer, and this was a vexation, adding to the fear that the poor fellow’s rejection had been final.  Yet she might have missed the letter by being summoned home.  Close to the lodge, they overtook Sir Harry, riding dejectedly homewards, and, glad to be saved going up to the house, they stopped and inquired for Lady Tyrrell.

“Very low and oppressed,” he said.  “M’Vie does not give us reason to expect a change just yet.  Do they tell you the same?  Worth attends you, I think?”

“He seems to think it must run on for at least three weeks,” said Julius.

“You’ve been to the meeting, eh?  Was it that well of Pettitt’s?  Really that meddling wife of Duncombe’s ought to be prosecuted.  I hope she’ll catch the fever and be served out.”

“She tried to prevent it,” said Julius.

“Pshaw! women have no business with such things, they only put their foot in it.  Nobody used to trouble themselves about drains, and one never heard of fevers.”