It was ten o’clock before Captain Aylmer and Miss Amedroz met at breakfast, and they had before that been together in Mrs Winterfield’s room.  The doctor had told Captain Aylmer that his aunt was very ill very ill, dangerously ill.  She had been wrong to go into such a place as the cold, unaired Town-hall, and that, too, in the month of November; and the fatigue had also been too much for her.  Mrs Winterfield, too, had admitted to Clara that she know herself to be very ill.  ‘I felt it coming on me last night,’ she said, ’when I was talking to you; and I felt it still more strongly when I left you after tea.  I have lived long enough.  God’s will be done.’  At that moment, when she said she had lived long enough, she forgot her intention with reference to her will.  But she remembered it before Clara had left the room.  ‘Tell Frederic’, she said, ‘to send at once for Mr Palmer.’  Now Clara knew that Mr Palmer was the attorney, and resolved that she would give no such message to Captain Aylmer.  But Mrs Winterfield sent for her nephew, who had just left her, and herself gave her orders to him.  In the course of the morning there came tidings from the attorney’s office that Mr Palmer was away from Perivale, that he would be back on the morrow, and that he would of course wait on Mrs Winterfield immediately on his return.

Captain Aylmer and Miss Amedroz discussed nothing but their aunt’s state of health that morning over the breakfast-table.  Of course, under such circumstances in the house, there was no further immediate reference made to that offer of dearest friendship.  It was clear to them both that the doctor did not expect that Mrs Winterfield would again leave her bed; and it was clear to Clara also that her aunt was of the same opinion.

‘I shall hardly be able to go home now,’ she said.

‘It will be kind of you if you can remain.’

‘And you?’

’I shall remain over the Sunday.  If by that time she is at all better, I will run up to town and come down again before the end of the week.  I know you don’t believe it, but a man really has some things which he must do.’

‘I don’t disbelieve you, Captain Aylmer.’

‘But you must write to me daily if I do go.’

To this Clara made no objection and she must write also to some one else.  She must let her cousin know how little chance there was that she would be at home at Christmas, explaining to him at the same time that his visit to her father would on that account be all the more welcome.

‘Are you going to her now?’ he asked, as Clara got up immediately after breakfast.  ’I shall be in the house all the morning, and if you want me you will of course send for me.’

‘She may perhaps like to see you.’

’I will come up every now and again.  I would remain there altogether, only I should be in the way.’  Then he got a newspaper and made himself comfortable over the fire, while she went up to her weary task in her aunt’s room.