“Why must not Lady Isabel be talked of to him?”

A moment after the question had left her lips, she wondered what possessed her to give utterance to it.

“I’ll tell you,” said William in a whisper.  “She ran away from papa.  Lucy talks nonsense about her having been kidnapped, but she knows nothing.  I do, though they don’t think it, perhaps.”

“She may be among the redeemed, some time, William, and you with her.”

He fell back on the sofa-pillow with a weary sigh, and lay in silence.  Lady Isabel shaded her face, and remained in silence also.  Soon she was aroused from it; William was in a fit of loud, sobbing tears.

“Oh, I don’t want to die!  I don’t want to die!  Why should I go and leave papa and Lucy?”

She hung over him; she clasped her arms around him; her tears, her sobs, mingling with his.  She whispered to him sweet and soothing words; she placed him so that he might sob out his grief upon her bosom; and in a little while the paroxysm had passed.

“Hark!” exclaimed William.  “What’s that?”

A sound of talking and laughter in the hall.  Mr. Carlyle, Lord Mount Severn, and his son were leaving the dining-room.  They had some committee appointed that evening at West Lynne and were departing to keep it.  As the hall-door closed upon them, Barbara came into the gray parlor.  Up rose Madame Vine, scuffled on her spectacles, and took her seat soberly upon a chair.

“All in the dark, and your fire going out!” exclaimed Barbara, as she hastened to stir the latter and send it into a blaze.  “Who’s on the sofa?  William, you ought to be to bed!”

“Not yet, mamma.  I don’t want to go yet.”

“But it is quite time that you should,” she returned, ringing the bell.  “To sit up at night is not the way to make you strong.”

William was dismissed.  And then she returned to Madame Vine, and inquired what Dr. Martin had said.

“He said the lungs were undoubtedly affected; but, like all doctors, he would give no decisive opinion.  I could see that he had formed one.”

Mrs. Carlyle looked at her.  The firelight played especially upon the spectacles, and she moved her chair into the shade.

“Dr. Martin will see him again next week; he is coming to West Lynne.  I am sure, by the tone of his voice, by his evasive manner, that he anticipates the worst, although he would not say so in words.”

“I will take William into West Lynne myself,” observed Barbara.  “The doctor will, of course, tell me.  I came in to pay my debts,” she added, dismissing the subject of the child, and holding out a five-pound note.

Lady Isabel mechanically stretched out her hand for it.

“Whilst we are, as may be said, upon the money topic,” resumed Barbara, in a gay tone, “will you allow me to intimate that both myself and Mr. Carlyle very much disapprove of your making presents to the children.  I was calculating, at a rough guess the cost of the toys and things you have bought for them, and I think it must amount to a very large portion of the salary you have received.  Pray do not continue this, Madame Vine.”