Mabel got up, and drew a heavy travelling-shawl that covered Herbert’s lower limbs over his arms and chest.

“I will open the window!” she said, deprecatingly.

A sluice of cold air rushed in, beating the blaze this way and that, puffing ashes from the hearth into the room, and eliciting from Mrs. Aylett what would have been a peevish interjection in another woman.

“My dear sister! the remedy is worse than the offence.  Chloroform is preferable to creosote, or whatever abominable element is the principal ingredient of smoke and cold!  The thermometer must be down to the freezing-point!”

Mabel lowered the sash.

“You have been sitting in a room without fire, I suspect.  The temperature here is delightful.  I am sorry we have exiled you from such comfortable quarters.”

“Don’t speak of it!  I cannot endure to sit here alone—­or anywhere else.  I have slept most of the afternoon.  How the wind blows!  I wish Winston were at home.”

“It is a dark afternoon.  He seldom returns from court so early as this.  It is not six yet.”

Mabel still essayed pacification of the other’s ruffled mood.

“You are better, I see,” Mrs. Aylett said abruptly to her brother.  “You were not subject to these spells formerly.  People generally outlive constitutional headaches—­so I have noticed.  It is queer yours should occur so often and wax more violent each time.  You should have medical advice before they ripen into a more serious disorder.”

Herbert shaded his eyes from the fire, and lay with out replying, until his wife believed he had relapsed into a doze.

She was convinced of her mistake by his saying, slowly and distinctly,—­

“You do not enter into Clara’s whole meaning, Mabel.  We have been careful, all of us, never to tell you that our father was imbecile by the time he was fifty and died, in his sixtieth year, of the disease your brother named this morning—­softening of the brain.  I, of all his children, am most like him physically.  If it be true that this danger menaces me, you should be informed of it, and know, furthermore, that it is incurable.”

Mabel also paused before answering.

“I cannot assent to the hypothesis of your inherited malady, Herbert.  These headaches may mean nothing.  But let that be as it may, you should have told me of this before.”

“You see,” broke in Mrs. Aylett’s triumphant sarcasm.  “The reward of your maiden attempt at congugal confidence is reproof.  What have I warned you from the beginning?”

“Not reproof,” corrected Mabel, in mild decision.  “My knowledge of the secret he deemed it wise and kind to withhold would have gained for him my sympathy, and my more constant and intelligent care of his health.  It is the hidden fear that grows and multiplies itself most rapidly.  Before it is killed it must be dragged to the light.”