“O very well, I dare say,” said Beatrice, rather absently, for she was looking at her aunt’s delicate fragile form, and thinking of what her father had been saying.

“And Queenie,” continued her aunt, earnestly, “you must take great care of your papa—­make him rest, and listen to your music, and read story-books instead of going back to his work all the evening.”

“To be sure I shall, Aunt Mary, as much as I possibly can.”

“But Bee,” said Fred, “you don’t mean that you are going to be shut up with that horrid Lady Susan all this time?  Why don’t you stay here, and let her take care of herself?”

“Mamma would not like that; and besides, to do her justice, she is really ill, Fred,” said Beatrice.

“It is too bad, now I am just getting better—­if they would let me, I mean,” said Fred:  “just when I could enjoy having you, and now there you go off to that old woman.  It is a downright shame.”

“So it is, Fred,” said Queen Bee gaily, but not coquettishly, as once she would have answered him, “a great shame in you not to have learned to feel for other people, now you know what it is to be ill yourself.”

“That is right, Bee,” said Aunt Mary, smiling; “tell him he ought to be ashamed of having monopolized you all so long, and spoilt all the comfort of your household.  I am sure I am,” added she, her eyes filling with tears, as she affectionately patted Beatrice’s hand.

Queen Bee’s heart was very full, but she knew that to give way to the expression of her feelings would be hurtful to Fred, and she only pressed her aunt’s long thin fingers very earnestly, and turned her face to the fire, while she struggled down the rising emotion.  There was a little silence, and when they began to talk again, it was of the engravings at which Fred had just been looking.  The visit lasted till the dressing bell rang, when Beatrice was obliged to go, and she shook hands with Fred, saying cheerfully, “Well, good-bye, I hope you will be better friends with the doctors next time I see you.”

“Never will I like one inch of a doctor, never!” repeated Fred, as she left the room, and ran to snatch what moments she could with her mamma in the space allowed for dressing.

Grandmamma was happy that evening, for, except poor Frederick’s own place, there were no melancholy gaps at the dinner-table.  He had Bennet to sit with him, and besides, there was within call the confidential old man-servant, who had lived so many years at Rocksand, and in whom both Fred and his mother placed considerable dependence.

Everything looked like recovery; Mrs. Frederick Langford came down and talked and smiled like her own sweet self; Mrs. Geoffrey Langford was ready to hear all the news, old Mr. Langford was quite in spirits again, Henrietta was bright and lively.  The thought of long days in London with Lady Susan, and of long evenings with no mamma, and with papa either writing or at his chambers, began from force of contrast to seem doubly like banishment to poor little Queen Bee, but whatever faults she had, she was no repiner.  “I deserve it,” said she to herself, “and surely I ought to bear my share of the trouble my wilfulness has occasioned.  Besides, with even one little bit of papa’s company I am only too well off.”