“Philip, my dear boy! do rest—­do go to bed,” cried his mother imploringly, coming into the room with her soft hurrying step.  “It’s going on for one o’clock.  Elizabeth mustn’t keep you talking like this!”

She smiled at him with uplifted finger, trying to hide from him all traces of emotion.

But her son looked at her steadily.

“Mother, is Anderson gone?”

“No,” said Mrs. Gaddesden, with hesitation.  “But he doesn’t want you to talk any more to-night—­he begs you not.  Please—­Philip!”

“Ask him to come here!” said Philip, peremptorily.  “I want to talk to him and Elizabeth.”

Mrs. Gaddesden protested in vain.  The mother and daughter looked at each other with flushed faces, holding a kind of mute dialogue.  Then Elizabeth rose from her seat by the fire.

“I will call Mr. Anderson, Philip.  But if we convince you that what you ask is quite impossible, will you promise to go quietly to bed and try to sleep?  It breaks mother’s heart, you know, to see you straining yourself like this.”

Philip nodded—­a crimson spot in each cheek, his frail hands twining and untwining as he tried to compose himself.

Elizabeth went half-way down the stairs and called.  Anderson hurried out of the drawing-room, and saw her bending to him from the shadows, very white and calm.

“Will you come back to Philip a moment?” she said, gently.  “Philip has told me what he proposed to you.”

Anderson could not find a word to say.  In a blind tumult of feeling he caught her hand, and pressed his lips to it, as though appealing to her dumbly to understand him.

She smiled at him.

“It will be all right,” she whispered.  “My poor Philip!” and she led him back to the sick room.

“George—­I wanted you to come back, to talk this thing out,” said Philip, turning to him as he entered, with the tyranny of weakness.  “There’s no time to waste.  You know—­everybody knows—­I may get worse—­and there’ll be nothing settled.  It’s my duty to settle—­”

Elizabeth interrupted him.

“Philip darling!—­”

She was hanging over his chair, while Anderson stood a few feet away, leaning against the mantelpiece, his face turned from the brother and sister.  The intimacy—­solemnity almost—­of the sick-room, the midnight hour, seemed to strike through Elizabeth’s being, deepening and yet liberating emotion.

“Dear Philip!  It is not for Mr. Anderson to answer you—­it is for me.  If he could give up his country—­for happiness—­even for love—­I should never marry him—­for—­I should not love him any more.”

Anderson turned to look at her.  She had moved, and was now standing in front of Philip, her head thrown back a little, her hands lightly clasped in front of her.  Her youth, her dress, her diamonds, combined strangely with the touch of high passion in her shining eyes, her resolute voice.