‘Are they being done?’ said Isabel, quietly.  ’I suppose the maids were busy this morning.’

’And Charlotte, too!  She looks half dead.  I thought Ellen was to do such work, and ought to have done it in proper time.’

’Little Catharine is so fretful, that Ellen cannot be spared from the nursery.’

‘I suppose she might be, if you were not absorbed in that writing.’

’I had the children with me, while the servants were at dinner; but Kitty was so troublesome, that I could not keep her.  I am particularly anxious to finish this.’

‘Some people would think a sick child more engrossing than that—­’ He had very nearly said trash, but he broke off short.

‘There is nothing really the matter with her,’ began Isabel, composedly; but James did not wait to listen, and muttering, ’That girl will be killed if she goes on,’ he ran up to the nursery, whence he already heard a sound of low fretting.

The child was sitting on the nurse’s lap, with a hot red spot on one cheek, teased and disturbed by the noises that the lesser ones were constantly making, as one lay in her cot, and the other was carried about by the girl.  As he entered, she shrieked joyously, and stretched out her arms, and Kitty was at once clinging, hugging round his neck.  Sending Ellen down to finish the stairs, he carried off the little girl, fondling and talking to her, and happy in her perfect content.  But he did not go to the drawing-room.  ’No, no, mamma must not be interrupted,’ he bitterly thought, as he carried her down to the fireless study, hung his plaid round himself and her, and walked up and down the room with her, amusing her till she fell into a slumber on his shoulder.

Isabel could not at once resume her pen.  Her even temper was for once ruffled, and her bosom swelled at the thought that his reproach was unjust; she was willing to do what was fitting, and he ought not to expect her to be an absolute nursery-maid.  Women must keep up the tone of their own minds, and she might be being useful to the world as well as to her own family.  If he wanted a mere household drudge, why had he not looked elsewhere?  Up went her queenly head, as she believed her powers were meant for other things; but her heart gave a painful throb at the recollection that poverty had been her voluntary choice, and had seemed perfect felicity with James.  Alas! she loved, honoured, and admired him, as her upright, unselfish, uncompromising husband, but worries, and rebukes, and tart answers, had made many a rent in the veil in which her fancy had enfolded him.  Sir Roland had disappeared, and James and Sir Hubert were falling farther and farther asunder.