“Yes,” said Raymond, understanding more than the Irish tongue fully expressed.  “I never saw a woman sit better than she did, and she looked as young and light in the saddle as you could, till that day, when, after the rains, the bank where the bridle-path to Squattles End was built up, gave way with the horse’s feet, and down she went twenty feet, and was under the horse when Miles and I got down to her!  We brought her on a mattress to that room, not knowing whether she were alive; and she has never moved out of it!  It was agony to her to be touched.”

“Yes but it can’t be that now.  Was not that three years ago?”

“Not so much.  Two and a half.  We had Hayter down to see her, and he said perfect rest was the only chance for her.”

“And has not he seen her lately?”

“He died last winter; and old Worth, who comes in once a week to look at her, is not fit for more than a little watching and attention.  I dare say we all have learnt to acquiesce too much in her present state, and that more might be done.  You see she has never had a lady’s care, except now and then Jenny Bowater’s.”

“I do feel sure she could bear more now,” said Rosamond, eagerly.  “It would be such a thing if she could only be moved about that down-stairs floor.”

“And be with us at meals and in the evening,” said Raymond, his face lightening up.  “Thank you, Rosamond!”

“I’ll write to Mary M’Kinnon to-morrow, to ask about the chair,” cried Rosamond; and Raymond, hearing the door-bell, hurried down, to find his wife standing alone over the drawing-room fire, not very complacent.

“Where have you been, Raymond?”

“I was talking to Rosamond.  She has seen a chair on which it might be possible to move my mother about on this floor.”

“I thought—­” Cecil flushed.  She was on the point of saying she thought Rosamond was not to interfere in her department any more than she in Rosamond’s; but she kept it back, and changed it into “Surely the doctor and nurses must know best.”

“A fresh eye often makes a difference,” said Raymond.  “To have her among us again—!” but he was cut short by the announcement of Mr. and Miss Fuller.

“Poor Mr. Fuller,” as every one called him, was the incumbent of St. Nicholas, Willansborough, a college living always passed by the knowing old bachelor fellows, and as regularly proving a delusion to the first junior in haste for a wife.  Twenty-five years ago Mr. Fuller had married upon this, which, as Mr. Bindon said, was rather a reason for not marrying—­a town with few gentry, and a petty unthriving manufacture, needing an enormous amount of energy to work it properly, and getting—­Mr. Fuller, with force yearly decreasing under the pressure of a sickly wife, ill-educated, unsatisfactory sons, and unhealthy, aimless daughters.  Of late some assistance had been obtained, but only from Mr. Driver, the ‘coach’ or cramming tutor, who was directing the studies of Frank and half a dozen more youths, and his aid was strictly limited to a share in the Sunday services.