As to Christian herself, she was, even externally, greatly changed.  Pale as she looked, and no wonder, there was a light in her eye and a firmness in her step very different from those of the weary-looking woman who used to roam listlessly about the gloomy galleries or sit silently working in the equally gloomy drawing-room with Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey.

Poor Aunt Maria, in her regular daily visit—­she dared venture no more—­to the sick-room door, would sometimes say hesitatingly, “My dear, how well you look still?  You are sure you are not breaking down?” And Christian, grateful for the only kindly woman’s face she ever saw near her, would respond with a smile—­sometimes with a kiss, which always alarmed Aunt Maria exceedingly.

As for Aunt Henrietta, she never came at all.  Since the evening when she had marched out of the room in high dudgeon, she had taken not the smallest notice of the sick boy.  His life or death was apparently of far less moment to her than her own offended dignity.  Had he been left in her sole charge, she would doubtless have done her duty to him but to stand by and see another doing it?  No! a thousand times no!  That part, insignificant in itself, and yet often one of the very sweetest and most useful in life’s harmonies, familiarly called “second fiddle,” was a part impossible to be played by Miss Gascoigne.

What she did or said—­though probably the first was little and the other a great deal—­was happily unknown to Mrs. Grey.  Her one duty lay clear before her, to save her poor boy’s life, if any human means could do it.  And sometimes, when she saw the agony and anxiety in his father’s face, Christian felt a wild joy in spending herself and being spent, even to the last extremity, if by such means she could repay to her most good and tender husband that never-counted, unaccountable debt of love, which nothing ever does pay except return in kind.

Concerning Arthur himself, the matter was simple enough now.  All his fractiousness, restlessness, and innumerable wants were easy to put up with; she loved the child.  And he, who (except from his father) had never known any love before, took it with a wondering complacency, half funny, half pathetic.  Sometimes he would say, looking at her wistfully, “Oh, it’s so nice to be ill!” And once, the first time she untied his right arm, and allowed it to move freely, he slipped it around her neck, whispering, “You are very good to me, mother.”  Christian crept away.  She dared not clasp him or cry over him, he was so weak still; but she stole aside into the oriel window, her heart full almost to bursting.

After that he always called her “mother.”

The other two children she scarcely ever saw.  The need for keeping Arthur quiet was so vital, that of course they were not admitted to his room, and she herself rarely left it.  Dim and far away seemed all the world, and especially her own poor life, whether happy or miserable, compared with that frail existence, which hung almost upon a thread.