She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave her, and smiling at him.  Her voice soothed him.  It was so clear and yet soft, like a song,—­not a song of romance or passion, but like the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing.  And her face reminded him even more of his mother than Pamela’s.  She was not the least like his mother, but there was something in her expression that first youth cannot have—­something comforting, profound, sustaining.

He wanted her always to sit there.  But his mind wandered from what she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.

‘Is father there?’ he asked, trying to turn his head, and failing.

‘Not yet.’

‘Poor father!  Elizabeth!’ he spoke the name with a boyish shyness.

‘Yes!’ She stooped over him.

‘You won’t go away?’

Elizabeth hesitated a moment, and he looked distressed.

’From Mannering, I mean.  Do stay, Broomie!’—­the name slipped out, and in his weakness he did not notice it—­’Pamela knows—­that she was horrid!’

‘Dear Desmond, I will do everything I can for Pamela.’

‘And for father?’

‘Yes, indeed—­I will be all the help I can,’ repeated Elizabeth.

Desmond relapsed into silence and apparent sleep.  But Elizabeth’s heart smote her.  She felt she had not satisfied him.

* * * * *

But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room.  Only she could lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair terrified the household.  The nurses and doctors depended on her for all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to hospital service.  The servants of the house would have worked all night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond.  Yet all this was scarcely seen—­it was only felt—­’a life, a presence like the air.’  Most of us have known the same experience—­how, when human beings come to the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women, who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.  It was so at Mannering.  A tender, unconscious sovereignty established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped themselves round it.

Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he might know what was happening on the battlefield.  He would have the telegrams read to him night and morning.  And he would lie brooding over them for long afterwards.  The Rector came to see him, and Desmond accepted gratefully his readings and his prayers.  But they were scarcely done before he would turn to Elizabeth, and his eager feverish look would send her to the telephone to ask Arthur Chicksands at the War Office if Haig’s mid-day telegram was in—­or any fresh news.