No, I did not venture.  I thought it might have been averted; but I was only obliged to take her up to the nurseries.  On the way up she asked which way my father’s room lay.  I answered, “Oh! across there;” I did not know if she might not make a dash at it.

I think she must have heard at Shinglebay how delicate poor little Alured was, and thence gathered hopes of the succession for her boy, for she asked her sharp questions about his health all the way up, and knew that he had had fits.  I could not put her down as one generally can inquisitive people.  I suppose it was because she was more sensible of the difference in our real positions than I have as yet felt.

Baby was asleep; and I think she was touched by the actual sight of him.  She said he was very like her boy; and though I supposed that a mere assertion at the time, it was quite true.  Alured and Trevor Lea have always been remarkably alike.  However, she cross-examined Nurse about his health even more minutely, and then took her leave; but she came again every day, walking after the first, as long as my dear father lived.

And she must have talked, for there came a kind of feeling over everyone, as well as ourselves, that something was hanging over us, of which the issue would be known when my father’s illness took some turn.

Mr. Decies came every day to inquire, but I could not bear a strange eye, and Hester might have been looking on.  I was steeling myself against him.  Was I right?—­oh! was I right?  I have wondered and grieved!  For I knew well enough what he had been thinking of for months before; only I did not want it to come to a point.  How was I to leave little Alured to Jaquetta? or disturb my father by breaking up his home?  I liked him on the whole, and had come the length of thinking that if I ever married at all, it would be—­ But that’s all nonsense; and mine could not have been what other people’s love was, or I should not have shrunk from the sight and look of him.  If it had been only poverty that was coming, it would have been a different thing; but to be nameless impostors!

Mrs. Deerhurst had gone out on a round of visits, when Emily came to us, taking her younger daughter.  They were not a very letter-writing family.  It is odd how some people’s pen is a real outlet of expression; while others seem to lack the nerve that might convey their thoughts to it, even when they live in more sympathy than Emily could well have had with her mother.

At least, so I understand, what afterwards we wondered at, that Emily never mentioned Hester; only saying, when, after some days she did write, that Lord Trevorsham was ill.

So Fulk had the one comfort of being with her when he was out of the sick room.  I used to see them from the window walking up and down the terrace in the blue east wind haze of those March days, never that I could see speaking.  I don’t think my brother would have felt it honourable to tie one additional link between himself and her.  He had not a doubt as to how her mother would act, but to be in her dear little affectionate presence was a better help than we could give him, even though nothing passed between them.