And all this time a little, young, grey-eyed woman was making her way; not towards him, but towards the dead son, whom as yet she believed to be her living husband.  She knew she was acting in defiance of his expressed wish; but he had never dismayed her with any expression of his own fears about his health; and she, bright with life, had never contemplated death coming to fetch away one so beloved.  He was ill—­ very ill, the letter from the strange girl said that; but Aimee had nursed her parents, and knew what illness was.  The French doctor had praised her skill and neat-handedness as a nurse, and even if she had been the clumsiest of women, was he not her husband—­her all?  And was she not his wife, whose place was by his pillow?  So without even as much reasoning as has been here given, Aimee made her preparations, swallowing down the tears that would overflow her eyes, and drop into the little trunk she was packing so neatly.  And by her side, on the ground, sate the child, now nearly two years old; and for him Aimee had always a smile and a cheerful word.  Her servant loved her and trusted her; and the woman was of an age to have had experience of humankind.  Aimee had told her that her husband was ill, and the servant had known enough of the household history to know that as yet Aimee was not his acknowledged wife.  But she sympathized with the prompt decision of her mistress to go to him directly, wherever he was, Caution comes from education of one kind or another, and Aimee was not dismayed by warnings; only the woman pleaded hard for the child to be left.  ’He was such company,’ she said; ’and he would so tire his mother in her journeying; and maybe his father would be too ill to see him.’  To which Aimee replied, ’Good company for you, but better for me.  A woman is never tired with carrying her own child’ (which was not true; but there was sufficient truth in it to make it be believed by both mistress and servant), ’and if Monsieur could care for anything, he would rejoice to hear the babble of his little son.’  So Aimee caught the evening coach to London at the nearest cross-road, Martha standing by as chaperon and friend to see her off, and handing her in the large lusty child, already crowing with delight at the sight of the horses.  There was a ‘lingerie’ shop, kept by a Frenchwoman, whose acquaintance Aimee had made in the days when she was a London nursemaid, and thither she betook herself, rather than to an hotel, to spend the few night-hours that intervened before the Birmingham coach started at early morning.  She slept or watched on a sofa in the parlour, for spare-bed there was none; but Madame Pauline came in betimes with a good cup of coffee for the mother, and of ‘soupe blanche’ for the boy; and they went off again into the wide world, only thinking of, only seeking the ‘him,’ who was everything human to both.  Aimee remembered the sound of the name of the village where Osborne had often told her that he alighted from the coach