“That is true.”

She gave him a curious and rather searching look; then, leaning over her boy, said, “Mammy’s not afraid.  Beautiful Pet was not born to die directly.  He will never leave his mam-ma.  No, uncle, he never can.  For my life is bound in his and his dear father’s.  It is a triple cord:  one go, go all.”

She said this with a quiet resolution that chilled Uncle Philip.

At this moment the nurse, who had been bending so pertinaciously over some work that her eyes were invisible, looked quickly up, cast a furtive glance at Mrs. Staines, and finding she was employed for the moment, made an agitated signal to Dr. Philip.  All she did was to clench her two hands and lift them half way to her face, and then cast a frightened look towards the door; but Philip’s senses were so sharpened by constant alarm and watching, that he saw at once something serious was the matter.  But as he had asked himself what he should do in case of some sudden alarm, he merely gave a nod of intelligence to the nurse, scarcely perceptible, then rose quietly from his seat, and went to the window.  “Snow coming, I think,” said he.  “For all that we shall have the March summer in ten days.  You mark my words.”  He then went leisurely out of the room; at the door he turned, and, with all the cunning he was master of, said, “Oh, by the by, come to my room, nurse, when you are at leisure.”

“Yes, doctor,” said the nurse, but never moved.  She was too bent on hiding the agitation she really felt.

“Had you not better go to him, nurse?”

“Perhaps I had, madam.”

She rose with feigned indifference, and left the room.  She walked leisurely down the passage, then, casting a hasty glance behind her, for fear Mrs. Staines should be watching her, hurried into the doctor’s room.  They met at once in the middle of the room, and Mrs. Briscoe burst out, “Sir, it is known all over the house!”

“Heaven forbid!  What is known?”

“What you would give the world to keep from her.  Why, sir, the moment you cautioned me, of course I saw there was trouble.  But little I thought—­sir, not a servant in the kitchen or the stable but knows that her husband—­poor thing! poor thing!—­Ah! there goes the housemaid—­to have a look at her.”

“Stop her!”

Mrs. Briscoe had not waited for this; she rushed after the woman, and told her Mrs. Staines was sleeping, and the room must not be entered on any account.

“Oh, very well,” said the maid, rather sullenly.

Mrs. Briscoe saw her return to the kitchen, and came back to Dr. Staines; he was pacing the room in torments of anxiety.

“Doctor,” said she, “it is the old story:  ‘Servants’ friends, the master’s enemies.’  An old servant came here to gossip with her friend the cook (she never could abide her while they were together, by all accounts), and told her the whole story of his being drowned at sea.”