‘He thinks it all a scheme!’ said Albinia, in a tone of great injury.

‘No, indeed, Albinia,’ answered her brother, seriously, ’I fully believe that Gilbert imagines all that he tells you, but you cannot suppose that either the tutor or doctor could fail to see if he were so very ill.’

‘Certainly not,’ assented Mr. Kendal.

’And low spirits are more apt to accompany a slight ailment, than such an illness as you apprehend.’

‘I believe you are right,’ said Mr. Kendal.  ‘Where is the letter?’

Albinia did not like it to come under discussion, but could not withhold it, and as she read it again, she felt that neither Maurice nor her cousin Fred could have written the like, but she was only the more impelled to do battle, and when she came to the unlucky conclusion, she exclaimed, ’I am sure that was an afterthought.  I dare say Price asked him while he was writing.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Mr. Kendal, coming to the ‘presentiment.’

She hesitated, afraid both of him and of Maurice, but there was no alternative.  ‘Poor Gilbert!’ she said.  ’It was a cry or call from his brother just at last.  It has left a very deep impression.’

‘Indeed!’ said his father, much moved.  ’Yes.  Edmund gave a cry such as was not to be forgotten,’ and the sigh told how it had haunted his own pillow; ’but I had not thought that Gilbert was in a condition to notice it.  Did he mention it to you?’

’Yes, not long after I came, he thinks it was a call, and I have never known exactly how to deal with it.’

‘It is a case for very tender handling,’ said Maurice.

‘I should have desired him never to think of it again,’ said Mr. Kendal, decidedly.  ’Mere nonsense to dwell on it.  Their names were always in Edmund’s mouth, and it was nothing but accident.  You should have told him so, Albinia.’

And he walked out of the room.

‘Ah! it will prey upon him now,’ said Albinia.

’Yes, I thought he only spoke of driving it away because it was what he would like to be able to do.  But things do not prey on people of his age as they do on younger ones.’

‘I wonder if I did right,’ said Albinia.  ’I never liked to ask you, though I wished it.  I could not bear to treat it as a fancy.  How was I to know, if it may not have been intended to do him good?  And you see his father says it was very remarkable.’

‘Do you imagine that it dwells much upon his mind?’

‘Not when he is well—­not when it would do him good,’ said Albinia; ‘it rather haunts him the instant he is unwell.’

’He makes it a superstition, then, poor boy!  You thought me hard on him, Albinia; but really I could not help being angry with him for so lamentably frightening his father and you.’

‘Let us see how he is before you find fault with him,’ said Albinia.

‘You’re as bad as if you were his mother, or worse!’ exclaimed Maurice.