her, when Simpkins, that ancient man, appears upon the scene, and his eye betokens trouble.
"What is the matter?" I ask quickly.
"It's Symonds, Miss Nell; she is down with the fever. She had scarcely got back to The Towers when she fell ill, and—it's a very bad case, the doctor says."
Symonds! Wattie's nurse—the woman in whose charge he has been up to the time she was seized with the fever! Oh, Wattie! Wattie! if my heart could break, I think it would break now, as I listen to Simpkins' words.
"Do you think he looks feverish," I cry, in a sharp voice that does not sound like my own; "do you know how people look when they are going to have the fever?"
"Indeed, Miss Nell, I cannot tell you," he says, sadly. "Their throats just get sore, and their faces flushed, and then God takes them—at least, that was how the other poor souls went in the village."
"Be silent!" cry, harshly. "Do you want to drive me mad?"
I stoop over my darling's face, and my eyes grow to it. Is it here already—does it lurk under this beautiful guise, that deadly, deadly fever?
"You'll not be sending him back to The Towers, Miss Nell?" asks Simpkins, with some hesitation; "it wouldn't be safe—but there are the young gentlemen here to be thought of."
I put my hand to my head in thought.
"He cannot go back there," I say aloud, "so he must stay here. Could he not be put somewhere, a long way from the rest, in case there is any infection?"
(Oh, my darling, my darling, that already it should come to if!)
"There's the room adjoining the school-room as was fitted up as a bedroom for Master Jack last year, when he sprained his
