’You told me I might trust to his disgust to anything unrefined or dissipated.  You knew him best.’

’There is that about him which men, not otherwise particular, respect as they might a woman or a child.  They never show themselves in their true colours, and I have known him uphold them because he has never seen their worst side!’

’I have always thought he learnt that peculiar refinement from your grandmother.’

‘I think,’ said Mrs. Ponsonby, softly, ’that it is purity of heart which makes him see heaven so bright.’

‘Sydney Calcott walked part of the way with me,’ continued Jem, ’and showed more feeling than I thought was in him.  He said just what I do, that he never saw any one to whom evil seemed so unable to cling.  He spoke of him at school—­said he was the friend of all the juniors, but too dreamy and uncertain for fellows of his own standing.  He said, at first they did not know what to make of him, with his soft looks and cool ways—­they could not make him understand bullying, for he could not be frightened nor put in a passion.  Only once, one great lout tried forcing bad language on him, and then Fitzjocelyn struck him, fought him, and was thoroughly licked, to be sure:  but Calcott said it was a moral victory—­no one tried the like again—­’

James was interrupted by Mr. Holdsworth’s entrance.  He said a few words apart to the Earl, who answered, with alarm, ’Not now; he has gone through enough.’

’I told him so, but he is very anxious, and begged me to return in the evening.’

‘Thank you.  You had better join us at dinner.’

The Vicar understood Lord Ormersfield better than did James, and said, pressing his hand, ’My Lord, it is heart-breaking, but the blessedness is more than we can feel.’

Mrs. Ponsonby and Mary were left to try to pacify James, who was half mad at his exclusion from the sickroom, and very angry with every hint of resignation—­abusing the treatment of the doctors, calling Mr. Walby an old woman, and vehemently bent on prophesying the well-doing of the patient.  Keenly sensitive, grief and suspense made him unusually irritable; and he seemed to have no power of waiting patiently, and trusting the event to wiser Hands.

Mrs. Ponsonby dared not entertain any such ardent wishes.  Life had not afforded her so much joy that she should deem it the greatest good, and all that she had heard gave her the impression that Louis was too soft and gentle for the world’s hard encounter,—­most pure and innocent, sincere and loving at present, but rather with the qualities of childhood than of manhood, with little strength or perseverance, so that the very dread of taint or wear made it almost a relief to think of his freshness and sweetness being secured for ever.  Even when she thought of his father, and shrank from such grief for him, she could not but see a hope that this affliction might soften the heart closed up by the first and far worse sorrow, and detach it from the interests that had absorbed it too exclusively.  All this was her food for silent meditation.  Mary sat reading or working beside her, paler perhaps than her wont, and betraying that her ear caught every sound on the stairs, but venturing no word except the most matter-of-fact remark, quietly giving force to the more favourable symptoms.