He had cautiously stood aside for Lady Kirton to take the head of the table; but the dowager had positively refused, and subsided into the chair at the foot.  She did not fill it in dear Edward’s time, she said; neither should she in dear Val’s; he had come home to occupy his own place.  And oh, thank goodness he was come!  She and Maude had been so lonely and miserable, growing thinner daily from sheer ennui.  So she faced Lord Hartledon at the end of the table, her flaxen curls surmounted by an array of black plumes, and looking very like a substantial female mute.

“What an awful thing that is about the Rectory!” exclaimed she, when they were more than half through dinner.

Lord Hartledon looked up quietly.  “What is the matter at the Rectory?”

“Fever has broken out.”

“Is that all!” he exclaimed, some amusement on his face.  “I thought it must have taken fire.”

“A fever’s worse than a fire.”

“Do you think so?”

“Think so!” echoed the dowager.  “You can run away from a fire; but a fever may take you before you are aware of it.  Every soul in the Rectory may die; it may spread to the parish; it may spread here.  I have kept tar burning outside the house the last two days.”

“You are not serious, Lady Kirton!”

“I am serious.  I wouldn’t catch a fever for the whole world.  I should die of fright before it had time to kill me.  Besides—­I have Maude to guard.  You were forgetting her.”

“There’s no danger at all.  One of the servants became ill after they returned home, and it proved to be fever.  I don’t suppose it will spread.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“From Miss Ashton.  She mentioned it in her last letter to me.”

“I didn’t know you corresponded with her,” cried the dowager, her tones rather shrill.

“Not correspond with Miss Ashton!” he repeated.  “Of course I do.”

The old dowager had a fit of choking:  something had gone the wrong way, she said.  Lord Hartledon resumed.

“It is an awful shame of those seaside lodging-house people!  Did you hear the particulars, Maude?  After the Ashtons concluded their visit in Wales, they went for a fortnight to the seaside, on their way home, taking lodgings.  Some days after they had been settled in the rooms they discovered that some fever was in the house; a family who occupied another set of apartments being ill with it, and had been ill before the Ashtons went in.  Dr. Ashton told the landlady what he thought of her conduct, and then they left the house for home.  But Mrs. Ashton’s maid, Matilda, had already taken it.”

“Did Miss Ashton give you these particulars?” asked Maude, toying with a late rose that lay beside her plate.

“Yes.  I should feel inclined to prosecute the woman, were I Dr. Ashton, for having been so wickedly inconsiderate.  But I hope Matilda is better, and that the alarm will end with her.  It is four days since I had Anne’s letter.”