Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy’s mind insisted with remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance, especially on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again.  That there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but the ease was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration:  he was convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever, and that he had taken just the wrong medicines.  He must go to bed immediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances and precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular.  Poor Mrs. Vincy’s terror at these indications of danger found vent in such words as came most easily.  She thought it “very ill usage on the part of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend.  Why Mr. Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not for the life of her understand.  He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher’s when they had the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should.  And if anything should happen—­”

Here poor Mrs. Vincy’s spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat and good-humored face were sadly convulsed.  This was in the hall out of Fred’s hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, and now came forward anxiously.  Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said that the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that this form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings:  he would go immediately to the druggist’s and have a prescription made up in order to lose no time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what had been done.

“But you must come again—­you must go on attending Fred. I can’t have my boy left to anybody who may come or not.  I bear nobody ill-will, thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he’d better have let me die—­if—­if—­”

“I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?” said Lydgate, really believing that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely with a case of this kind.

“Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate,” said Rosamond, coming to her mother’s aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.

When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not care if he never came into his house again.  Lydgate should go on now, whether Wrench liked it or not.  It was no joke to have fever in the house.  Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner on Thursday.  And Pritchard needn’t get up any wine:  brandy was the best thing against infection.  “I shall drink brandy,” added Mr. Vincy, emphatically—­as much as to say, this was not an occasion for firing with blank-cartridges.  “He’s an uncommonly unfortunate lad, is Fred. He’d need have—­some luck by-and-by to make up for all this—­else I don’t know who’d have an eldest son.”

“Don’t say so, Vincy,” said the mother, with a quivering lip, “if you don’t want him to be taken from me.”