I heard Bertram say while I was lighting my candle, “Poor Ursula! she will not see it.  Hart told me to-day that the child is dying—­would hardly get through the night.”

Now I had been thinking all the afternoon that he was better, and I had gone down to dinner cheered.  I turned into the doorway, and told Fulk to come and see.

He did come.  There was Alured, lying, as he had lain all day, upon his nurse’s knees, with her arm under his head.  He had not moaned for a long time, and I had left him in a more comfortable sleep.  He opened his eyes as we came in, held out his hands more strongly than we thought he could have done, quite smiled—­such an intelligent smile—­and said, “Tor—­Tor—­,” which was what he had always called his brother, making his gesture to go to him.

The tears came into Fulk’s eyes, though he smiled back and spoke in his sweet, strong voice, and held out his arms, while we told him he had better sit down.  Poor nurse! she must have been glad enough—­she had held him all that live-long day!  And he was quite eager to go to his brother, and smiled up and cooed out, “Tor—­Tor,” again, as he felt himself on the strong arm.

Fulk bade nurse go and lie down, and he would hold him.  And so he did.  I fed the child, as I had done at intervals all day; and he sometimes slept, sometimes woke and murmured or cooed a little, and Fulk scarcely spoke or stirred, hour after hour.  He had been travelling day and night, but, strange to say, that enforced calm—­ that tender stillness and watching, was better for him than rest.  He would only have tossed about awake, if he had gone to bed after a discussion with Bertram.

But in the morning Dr. Hart came, quite surprised to find the child alive; and when he looked at him and felt his pulse, he said, “You have saved him for this time, at least.”

(Everybody was lavish of pronouns, and chary of proper names.  Nobody knew what to call anybody.)

His little lordship was able to be laid in his cot, and Fulk, almost blind now with sheer sleep, stumbled off to his room, threw himself on his bed, and slept for seven hours in his clothes without so much as moving.  He confessed that he had never had such unbroken, dreamless sleep since he had first seen Hester Lea’s face.

That little murmur of “Tor—­Tor” had settled all our fates.  I don’t think he had realised before how love was the one thing that the child’s life hung upon, and that the boy himself must have that love and trust.  Then, too, when he had waked and dressed and come down, the first person he met was Hester, with her hard, glittering eyes, trying to condole, and not able to hide how the exulting look went out of her face on hearing that the Earl (as she chose to term him) was better.

She supposed some arrangement would soon be made, and Fulk said he should see the lawyers at once about it, and arrange for the personal guardianship of Lord Trevorsham.