“I don’t want to worry you,” continued Anne; “you’ve got a good deal to bear and to think of, and you’ve got to keep up for the sake of the child.  He’ll need you to be father and mother both.  Matron thinks you’ll be better here for the present, but you mustn’t give up and think you’re to stay in the Union all your life.  But try to think of the child, and how God’ll help you if you try to do the right.”

It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.

“She’s very quiet, isn’t she?” said the Matron.  “That’ll have to break down soon.  The doctor thinks she’ll be all right when the child comes.  The labour’ll give her a shock and rouse her.  She comes of a better class than the usual ones.  It’s the disgrace she can’t get over.  She’ll do anything she’s told to do.  I sometimes get tired of making the other women do as they’re told, but I wish sometimes she’d be a bit more like them.  You’ll be ready for your tea soon, won’t you, Jane?” she added in the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.

“Yes, please,” said Jane, without looking round.

“Here’s Miss Hilton come all this way to see you,” said the Matron a little more sharply.  “Can’t you say anything to her? you may not have so many friends come to see you as you expect, you know.”

There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken.  She neither replied nor stirred.  With the flight of Burton all hope had been killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one wing broken.  She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all.  She could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.

“You must think of the child, you know,” said the Matron.  “He’ll depend on you altogether, and you mustn’t give in like this.  She doesn’t care,” she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding.  “It’s a bad sign.  I can’t even rouse her with speaking of Burton.  She’s given up hope of him.  It’s like as if something’s dead inside her.  Doctor says it’s shock.”

“I should say it’s temper,” said a voice from one of the beds.  “Petting and spoiling all day long.”  The voice came from an old woman, with a soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.

“Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?” said the Matron, with a good-natured laugh.  “You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady’s a famous hand at taking anything that’s about, and keeping it for herself.  She doesn’t call it stealing, don’t you see.  Why, the other day she was having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away there was no thermometer to be seen.  ‘What have you done with it?’ she says.  ‘Why, I declare, I must have etten it,’ says this old lady.  What do you think of that?”

The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a patient expression.

“I don’t know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it isn’t visiting day,” she said.  “Nobody can go to sleep for such talking.”