“I can’t stand this, Joyce; I shall go.  If they want coffee, or anything of that, it can be sent here.  Ask.”

“I will presently, in a few minutes,” answered Joyce, with a real shiver.  “You are not going in, are you, ma’am?” she uttered, in apprehension, as Miss Carlyle began to steal on tip-toe to the inner-door, and Joyce had a lively consciousness that her sight would not be an agreeable one to Lady Isabel.  “They want the room free; they sent me out.”

“Not I,” answered Miss Corny.  “I could do no good; and those who cannot, are better away.”

“Just what Mr. Wainwright said when he dismissed me,” murmured Joyce.  And Miss Carlyle finally passed into the corridor and withdrew.

Joyce sat on; it seemed to her an interminable time.  And then she heard the arrival of Dr. Martin; heard him go into the next room.  By and by Mr. Wainwright came out of it, into the room where Joyce was sitting.  Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and before she could bring out the ominous words, “Is there any danger?” he had passed through it.

Mr. Wainwright was on his way to the apartment where he expected to find Mr. Carlyle.  The latter was pacing it; he had so paced it all the night.  His pale face flushed as the surgeon entered.

“You have little mercy on my suspense, Wainwright.  Dr. Martin has been here this twenty minutes.  What does he say?”

“Well, he cannot say any more than I did.  The symptoms are critical, but he hopes she will do well.  There’s nothing for it but patience.”

Mr. Carlyle resumed his weary walk.

“I come now to suggest that you should send for Little.  In these protracted cases—­”

The speech was interrupted by a cry from Mr. Carlyle, half horror, half despair.  For the Rev. Mr. Little was the incumbent of St. Jude’s, and his apprehensions had flown—­he hardly knew to what they had flown.

“Not for your wife,” hastily rejoined the surgeon—­“what good should a clergyman do to her?  I spoke on the score of the child.  Should it not live, it may be satisfactory to you and Lady Isabel to know that it was baptized.”

“I thank you—­I thank you,” said Mr. Carlyle grasping his hand, in his inexpressible relief.  “Little shall be sent for.”

“You jumped to the conclusion that your wife’s soul was flitting.  Please God, she may yet live to bear you other children, if this one does die.”

“Please God!” was the inward aspiration of Mr. Carlyle.

“Carlyle,” added the surgeon, in a musing sort of tone, as he laid his hand on Mr. Carlyle’s shoulder, which his own head scarcely reached, “I am sometimes at death-beds where the clergyman is sent for in this desperate need to the fleeting spirit, and I am tempted to ask myself what good another man, priest though he be, can do at the twelfth hour, where accounts have not been made up previously?”

It was hard upon midday.  The Rev. Mr. Little, Mr. Carlyle, and Miss Carlyle were gathered in the dressing-room, round a table, on which stood a rich china bowl, containing water for the baptism.  Joyce, her pale face working with emotion, came into the room, carrying what looked like a bundle of flannel.  Little cared Mr. Carlyle for the bundle, in comparison with his care for his wife.