“Not any, except weakness.”

“Except idleness, you mean.  Why don’t you order her to get up?”

“I have advised Lady Hartledon to do so, and she does not attend to me,” replied Sir Alexander.

“Oh,” said the dowager.  “She was always wilful.  What about her heart?”

“Her heart!” echoed Sir Alexander, looking up now as if a little aroused.

“Dear me, yes; her heart; I didn’t say her liver.  Is it sound, Pepps?”

“It’s sound, for anything I know to the contrary.  I never suspected anything the matter with her heart.”

“Then you are a fool!” retorted the complimentary dowager.

Sir Alexander’s temperament was remarkably calm.  Nothing could rouse him out of his tame civility, which had been taken more than once for obsequiousness.  The countess-dowager had patronized him in earlier years, when he was not a great man, or had begun to dream of becoming one.

“Don’t you recollect I once consulted you on the subject—­what’s your memory good for?  She was a girl then, of fourteen or so; and you were worth fifty of what you are now, in point of discernment.”

The oracle carried his thoughts back, and really could not recollect it.  “Ahem! yes; and the result was—­was—­”

“The result was that you said the heart had nothing the matter with it, and I said it had,” broke in the impatient dowager.

“Ah, yes, madam, I remember.  Pray, have you reason to suspect anything wrong now?”

“That’s what you ought to have ascertained, Pepps, not me.  What d’you mean by your neglect?  What, I ask, does she lie in bed for?  If her heart’s right, there’s nothing more the matter with her than there is with you.”

“Perhaps your ladyship can persuade Lady Hartledon to exert herself,” suggested the bland doctor.  “I can’t; and I confess I think that she only wants rousing.”

With a flourish of his hat and his small gold-headed black cane the doctor bowed himself out from the formidable dowager.  That lady turned her back upon him, and betook herself on the spur of the moment to Maude’s room, determined to “have it out.”

Curious sounds greeted her, as of some one in hysterical pain.  On the bed, clasped to his mother in nervous agony, was the wondering child, little Lord Elster:  words of distress, nay, of despair, breaking from her.  It seemed, the little boy, who was rather self-willed and rebellious on occasion, had escaped from the nursery, and stolen to his mother’s room.  The dowager halted at the door, and looked out from her astonished eyes.

“Oh, Edward, if we were but dead!  Oh, my darling, if it would only please Heaven to take us both!  I couldn’t send for you, child; I couldn’t see you; the sight of you kills me.  You don’t know; my babies, you don’t know!”

“What on earth does all this mean?” interrupted the dowager, stepping forward.  And Lady Hartledon dropped the boy, and fell back on the bed, exhausted.