At one point of her illness Lady Arthur said to Miss Adamson, who was alone with her, “Well, I never counted on this.  Our family have all had a trick of living to extreme old age, never dying till they could not help it; but it will be grand to get away so soon.”

Miss Adamson looked at her.  “Yes,” she said, “it’s a poor thing, life, after the glory of it is gone, and I have always had an intense curiosity to see what is beyond.  I never could see the sense of making a great ado to keep people alive after they are fifty.  Don’t look surprised.  How are the rest of the people that are ill?” She often asked for them, and expressed great satisfaction when told they were recovering.  “It will be all right,” she said, “if I am the only death in the place; but there is one thing I want you to do.  Send off a telegram to George Eildon and tell him I want to see him immediately:  a dying person can say what a living one can’t, and I’ll make it all right between Alice and him before I go.”

Miss Adamson despatched the telegram to Mr. Eildon, knowing that she could not refuse to do Lady Arthur’s bidding at such a time, although her feeling was against it.  The answer came:  Mr. Eildon had just sailed for Australia.

When Lady Arthur heard this she said, “I’ll write to him.”  When she had finished writing she said, “You’ll send this to him whenever you get his address.  I wish we could have sent it off at once, for it will be provoking if I don’t die, after all; and I positively begin to feel as if that were not going to be my luck at this time.”

Although she spoke in this way, Miss Adamson knew it was not from foolish irreverence.  She recovered, and all who had had the fever recovered, which was remarkable, for in other places it had been very fatal.

With Lady Arthur’s returning strength things at the hall wore into their old channels again.  When it was considered safe many visits of congratulation were paid, and among others who came were George Eildon’s mother and some of his sisters.  They were constantly having letters from George:  he had gone off very suddenly, and it was not certain when he might return.

Alice heard of George Eildon with interest, but not with the vital interest she had felt in him for a time:  that had worn away.  She had done her best to this end by keeping herself always occupied, and many things had happened in the interval; besides, she had grown a woman, with all the good sense and right feeling belonging to womanhood, and she would have been ashamed to cherish a love for one who had entirely forgotten her.  She dismissed her childish letter, which had given her so much vexation, from her memory, feeling sure that George Eildon had also forgotten it long ago.  She did not know of the letter Lady Arthur had written when she believed herself to be dying, and it was well she did not.

VII.