“You see her adoring father,” said Julius.  “My Rose has necessarily her own cares, but Anne has been my mother’s silent aid and stay for months, and what she has been in the present need no words can say.  My mother has had no power to take the direction of anything, her whole being has been absorbed, first in Raymond, now in Frank; and not only has Anne been Frank’s constant nurse through these five weeks of the most frightful fever and delirium I have seen at all here, but she has had thought for all, and managed all the house and servants.  We could do comparatively little, with Rose’s brother ill at home, and the baby so young; besides, there have been eleven cases in the parish; and there was Wil’sbro’—­but Anne has been the angel in the house.”

“I knew—­I knew she would be everything when once the first strangeness was over; but, poor girl, her heart is in Africa, and it has been all exile here; I could see it in every letter, though she tried to make the best of it.  If there had but been a child here!”

“I think you will find sufficient attachment to mother to weigh a good deal with her.  Poor Anne, she did think us all very wicked at first, and perhaps she does still, but at least this has drawn us all nearer together.”

And then the brothers lowered their voices, and Miles heard the full history of Raymond’s last illness, with all the details that Julius could have spoken of to none else, while the sailor’s tears slowly dropped through the hands that veiled his face.  It was a great deprivation to him that he might not look on Raymond’s face again, but the medical edict had been decisive, and he had come home to be of use and not a burthen.  As Julius told Rosamond, he only thoroughly felt the blessing of Miles’s return when he bade good night and left the Hall, in peace and security that it had a sufficient aid and stay, and that he was not deserting it.

Miles had proposed to send his wife to bed and take the night watch, and he so far prevailed that she lay down in the adjoining room in her dressing gown while he sat by Frank’s side.  She lay where she could feast her eyes upon him, as the lamplight fell on his ruddy brown cheek, black hair, and steady dark eye, so sad indeed, but so full of quiet strength and of heedful alacrity even in stillness—­a look that poor Raymond, with all his grave dignity, had never worn.  That sight was all Anne wanted.  She did not speak, she did not sleep; it was enough, more than enough, to have him there.  She was too much tired, body and mind, after five weeks of strain, for more than the sense that God had given her back what she loved, and this was ‘more than peace and more than rest.’

CHAPTER XXXI Breaking Down