“Yes, my lady, I sent Alfred with it; I did not seem as if I could go driving into Wil’sbro’ on such a day.”

Rosamond bade a kind farewell to the poor old coachman, and was walking homewards, when she saw a figure advancing towards her, strangely familiar, and yet hat and coat forbade her to believe it her husband, even in the dusk.  She could not help exclaiming, “Miles!”

“Yes!” he said, coming to a standstill.  “Are you Rosamond?”

“I am;—­Anne is quite well and Frank better.  Oh! this will do them good!  You know—­”

“Yes—­yes, I know,” he said hastily, as if he could not bear to let himself out to one as yet a stranger.  “My mother?”

“Absorbed in Frank too much to feel it yet fully; Anne watches them both.  Oh!  Miles, what she has been!” and she clasped his hand again.  “Let me call her.”

And Rosamond opened the hall door just as some instinct, for it could hardly have been sense of hearing, had brought Anne upon the stairs, where, as Miles would have hurried up to her, she seemed, in the light gray dress she still wore, to hover like some spirit eluding his grasp like the fabled shades.

“Oh no! you ought not.  Infection—­I am steeped in it.”

“Nonsense,” and she was gathered into the strong grasp that was home and rest to her, while Miles was weeping uncontrollably as he held her in his arms.  “O, Nannie, Nannie!  I did not think it would be like this.  Why did they keep me till he was gone?  No, I did not get the telegram, I only heard at the station.  They let me go this morning, and I did think I should have been in time.”  He loosed himself from her, and hung over the balustrade, struggling with a strong man’s anguish, then said in a low voice, “Did he want me?”

“He knew it was your duty,” said Anne.  “We all were thankful you were kept from infection, and he said many little things, but the chief was that he trusted you too much to leave any special messages.  Hark! that must be Mr. Charnock, Cecil’s father!  I must go and receive him.  Stay back, Miles, you can’t now—­you know my room—­”

He signed acquiescence, but lingered in the dark to look down and see how, though Rosamond had waited to spare them this reception, his wife’s tall graceful figure came forward, and her kindly comforting gestures, as the two sisters-in-law took the newcomer into the drawing-room, and in another minute Anne flitted up to him again.  “That good Rosamond is seeing to Mr. Charnock,” she said; “will you come, Miles?  I think it will do your mother good; only quietly, for Frank knows nothing.”

Mrs. Poynsett still sat by Frank.  To Miles’s eyes he was a fearful spectacle, but to Anne there was hourly progress; the sunken dejected look was gone, and though there was exhaustion, there was rest; but he was neither sleeping nor waking, and showed no heed when his brother dropped on one knee by his mother’s side, put an arm round her waist, and after one fervent kiss laid his black head on her lap, hiding his face there while she fondled his hair, and said, “Frank, Frankie dear, here’s Miles come home.”  He did not seem to hear, only his lips murmured something like ‘Anne,’ and the tender hand and ready touch of his unwearied nurse at once fulfilled his need, while his mother whispered, “Miles, she is our blessing!”