grumble.  Who wants to be a flame, doomed to be blown out by the same gust of wind that has first fanned it to its very brightest?  If you are not a flame you cannot, of course, be blown out.  Gusts no longer shake you.  Tempests pass you by untouched.  And if besides you have the additional advantage of being extremely smug, extremely thick-skinned, you shall go on living till ninety, and not during the whole of that time be stirred by so much as a single draught.

Priscilla came up determined to be so cheerful that she began to smile almost before she got to the door.  “I’ve come to tell you how splendidly we’re getting on at the cottage,” she said taking Tussie’s lean hot hand, the shell of her smile remaining but the heart and substance gone out of it, he looked so pitiful and strange.

“Really?  Really?” choked Tussie, putting the other lean hot hand over hers and burning all the coolness out of it.

The nurse looked still more disapproving.  She had not heard Sir Augustus had a fiancee, and even if he had this was no time for philandering.  She too had noticed the voice in which he had said Oh mother, and she saw by his eyes that his temperature had gone up.  Who was this shabby young lady?  She felt sure that no one so shabby could be his fiancee, and she could only conclude that Lady Shuttleworth must be mad.

“Nurse, I’m going to stay here a little,” said Lady Shuttleworth.  “I’ll call you when I want you.”

“I think, madam, Sir Augustus ought not—­” began the nurse.

“No, no, he shall not.  Go and have forty winks, nurse.”

And the nurse had to go; people generally did when Lady Shuttleworth sent them.

“Sit down—­no don’t—­stay a moment like this,” said Tussie, his breath coming in little jerks,—­“unless you are tired?  Did you walk?”

“I’m afraid you are very ill,” said Priscilla, leaving her hand in his and looking down at him with a face that all her efforts could not induce to smile.

“Oh I’ll be all right soon.  How good of you to come.  You’ve not been hungry since?”

“No, no,” said Priscilla, stroking his hands with her free hand and giving them soothing pats as one would to a sick child.

“Really not?  I’ve thought of that ever since.  I’ve never got your face that night out of my head.  What had happened?  While I was away—­what had happened?”

“Nothing—­nothing had happened,” said Priscilla hastily.  “I was tired.  I had a mood.  I get them, you know.  I get angry easily.  Then I like to be alone till I’m sorry.”

“But what had made you angry?  Had I—?”

“No, never.  You have never been anything but good and kind.  You’ve been our protecting spirit since we came here.”

Tussie laughed shrilly, and immediately was seized by a coughing fit.  Lady Shuttleworth stood at the foot of the bed watching him with a face from which happiness seemed to have fled for ever.  Priscilla grew more and more wretched, caught, obliged to stand there, distractedly stroking his hands in her utter inability to think of anything else to do.