Mr Prothero took her place.  He was alone with his wife, and the rough, loud man became gentle as one of his own lambs, as he bent over her and thanked God that she was better.  A big tear fell from his eyes on her face, and he made an inward vow, that if her life were spared, he would never again say a cross word to her as long as he lived.

She felt the tear, heard the kind words, and seemed to understand the vow, for she looked at him tenderly, and said in her low, weak voice, ‘God bless you, David!’

From that moment he went out to his work with a lightened heart; the labourers read the good news that their mistress was better in his face, and heard it in his voice.  Even Netta’s disobedience was forgotten, if not forgiven, in the joy of feeling that the partner of more than half his life was likely to recover.  And by degrees she did recover.  That is to say, before Rowland was obliged again to leave her, she was able to go down into the parlour and sit at her work, ‘quite like a lady,’ as she expressed it.  And even out of the evil of such an illness good had sprung.  It had aroused all the sympathy and kind feeling of relatives, friends, and neighbours; but especially had it been beneficial in bringing out the womanly kindness that lay hid under the stiffness of pride in Mrs Jonathan Prothero, and in opening the hearts of the sisters-in-law towards each other.  Mrs Jonathan forgot her cousin, Sir Philip Payne Perry, and helped to nurse, and learned to love her humbler connection, whilst the ever-ready tenderness of the simple farmer’s wife, sprung up to respond to it like a stream leaping in the sunlight.  Gladys, too, reaped the reward of her devotion, in the increased kindness of Mr Prothero, who began to forget the Irish beggar in the gentle girl whose care, under God, had saved his wife’s life; and so, as is usually the case, affliction had not come from the ground, but had fallen like a softening dew upon the irritated feelings of the afflicted, and bound heart still nearer to heart.

Perhaps in the younger and more impetuous natures it had done almost too much.  Thoughtless of consequences, they had all worked to save a life, valuable to so many.  Rowland, Owen, Miss Gwynne, Miss Hall, Gladys, had been thrown together at a time when the formalities of the world and the distinctions of rank are forgotten, and the tear of sympathy, the word of friendly comfort, or the pressure of the hand of kindly feeling are given and taken, without a thought of giver or receiver.  But they are remembered, and dwelt upon in after years as passages in life’s history never to be obliterated—­never to be forgotten.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HEIRESS.