For some time Mr. Devereux continued very ill, and Dr. Leslie gave little hope of his improvement.  Mr. Mohun and Claude were his constant attendants—­an additional cause of anxiety to the Miss Mohuns.  Emily was listless and melancholy, talking in a maundering, dismal way, not calculated to brace her spirits or those of her sisters.  Jane was not without serious thoughts, but whether they would benefit her depended on herself; for, as we have seen by the events of the autumn, sorrow and suffering do not necessarily produce good effects, though some effects they always produce.

Thus it was with Lilias.  Grief and anxiety aided her in subduing her will and learning resignation.  She did not neglect her daily duties, but was more exact in their fulfilment; and low as her spirits had been before, she now had an inward spring which enabled her to be the support of the rest.  She was useful to her father, always ready to talk to Claude, or walk with him in the intervals when he was sent out of the sickroom to rest and breathe the fresh air.  She was cheerful and patient with Emily, and devoid of petulance when annoyed by the spirits of the younger ones rising higher than accorded with the sad and anxious hearts of their elders.  Her most painful feeling was, that it was possible that she might be punished through her cousin, as she had already been through Agnes; that her follies might have brought this distress upon every one, and that this was the price at which the child’s baptism was to be bought.  Yet Lily would not have changed her present thoughts for any of her varying frames of mind since that fatal Whitsuntide.  Better feelings were springing up within her than she had then known; the church service and Sunday were infinitely more to her, and she was beginning to obtain peace of mind independent of external things.

She could not help rejoicing to see how many evidences of affection to the Rector were called forth by this illness; presents of fruit poured in from all quarters, from Lord Rotherwood’s choice hothouse grapes, to poor little Kezia Grey’s wood-strawberries; inquiries were continual, and the stillness of the village was wonderful.  There was no cricket on the hill, no talking in the street, no hallooing in the hay-field, and no burst of noise when the children were let out of school.  Many of the people were themselves in grief for the loss of their own relations; and when on Sunday the Miss Mohuns saw how many were dressed in black, they thought with a pang how soon they themselves might be mourning for one whose influence they had crippled, and whose plans they had thwarted during the three short years of his ministry.