It was an anxious week; for Miss Leaf had fallen ill.  Not seriously; and she never complained until her sister had left, when she returned to her bed and did not again rise.  She would not have Miss Hilary sent for, nor Miss Selina, who was away paying a ceremonious prenuptial visit to Mr. Ascott’s partner’s wife at Dulwich.

“I don’t want any thing that you can not do for me.  You are becoming a first rate nurse.  Elizabeth,” she said, with that passive, peaceful smile which almost frightened the girl; it seemed as if she were slipping away from this world and all its cares into another existence.  Elizabeth felt that to tell her any thing about her nephew’s affairs was perfectly impossible.  How thankful she was that in the quiet of the sick-room her mistress was kept in ignorance of the knocks and inquiries at the door, and especially of a certain ominous paper which had fallen into Mrs. Jones’s hands, and informed her, as she took good care to inform Elizabeth, that any day “the bailiffs” might be after her young master.

“And the sooner the whole set of you clear out of my house the better; I am a decent respectable woman,” said Mrs. Jones, that very morning; and Elizabeth had had to beg her as a favor not to disturb her sick mistress, but to wait one day, till Miss Hilary came home.

Also, when Ascott, ending with a cheerful and careless countenance his ten minutes’ after breakfast chat in his aunt’s room, had met Elizabeth on the staircase, he had stopped to bid her say if any body wanted him he was gone to Birmingham, and would not be home till Monday.  And on Elizabeth’s hesitating, she having determined to tell no more of these involuntary lies, he had been very angry, and then stooped to entreaties, begging her to do as he asked, or it would be the ruin of him.  Which she understood well enough when, all the day, she—­grown painfully wise, poor girl!—­watched a Jewish-looking man hanging about the house, and noticing every body that went in or out of it.

Now, sitting at Miss Leaf’s window, she fancied she saw this man disappear into the gin-palace opposite, and at the same moment a figure darted hurriedly round the street corner, and into the door of No. 15.  Elizabeth looked to see if her mistress were asleep, and then crept quietly out of the room, shutting the door after her.  Listening, she heard the sound of the latch-key, and of some one coming stealthily up stairs.

“Hollo!—­Oh, it’s only you, Elizabeth.”

“Shall I light your candle, sir?”

But when she did the sight was not pleasant.  Drenched with rain, his collar pulled up, and his hat slouched, so as in some measure to act as a disguise, breathless and trembling—­hardly any body would have recognized in this discreditable object that gentlemanly young man, Mr. Ascott Leaf.

He staggered into his room and threw himself across the bed.

“Do you want anything, Sir?” said Elizabeth, from the door.