her by Mrs. Jazeph as soon as the doctor
had left the room. The nurse said nothing
when her services were declined; and yet,
judging by her conduct, she seemed anxious
to speak. Twice, she advanced towards the
bedside, —opened her lips —stopped —and
retired confusedly, before she settled herself
finally in her former place by the dressing-
table. Here she remained, silent and out of
sight, until the child had been quieted, and
had fallen asleep in his mother's arms with
one little pink, half-closed hand resting on
her bosom. Rosamond could not resist
raising the hand to her lips, though she
risked waking him again by doing so. As
she kissed it, the sound of the kiss was
followed by a faint, suppressed sob, proceeding
from the other side of the curtains at the
lower end of the bed.

"What is that?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing, ma'am," said Mrs. Jazeph, in
the same constrained, whispering tones in
which she had answered Mrs. Frankland's
former question. "I think I was just falling
asleep in the arm-chair, here; and I ought
to have told you perhaps that, having had
my troubles, and being afflicted with a heart
complaint, I have a habit of sighing in my
sleep. It means nothing, ma'am, and I hope
you will be good enough to excuse it."

Rosamond's generous instincts were aroused
in a moment. "Excuse it!" she said. "I
hope I may do better than that, Mrs. Jazeph,
and be the means of relieving it. When
Mr. Orridge comes to-morrow, you shall
consult him, and I will take care that you want
for nothing that he may order. No! no!
Don't thank me until I have been the means
of making you well —and keep where you
are, if the arm-chair is comfortable. The
baby is asleep again; and I should like to
have half-an-hour's quiet, before I change to
the night-side of the bed. Stop where you
are for the present: I will call as soon as I
want you."

So far from exercising a soothing effect on
Mrs. Jazeph, these kindly-meant words
produced the precisely opposite result of making
her restless. She began to walk about the
room, and confusedly attempted to account
for the change in her conduct, by saying that
she wished to satisfy herself that all her
arrangements were properly made for the
night. In a few minutes more, she began,
in defiance of the doctor's prohibition, to
tempt Mrs. Frankland into talking again, by
asking questions about Porthgenna Tower,
and by referring to the chances for and
against its being chosen as a permanent
residence by the young married couple.

"Perhaps, ma'am," she said, speaking on
a sudden, with an eagerness in her voice,
which was curiously at variance with the
apparent, indifference of her manner.
"Perhaps, when you see Porthgenna Tower, you
may not like it so well as you think you
will now? Who can tell that you may not
get tired and leave the place again after a
few days — especially if you go into the empty
rooms. I should have thought -- if you will
excuse my saying so, ma'am -- I should have
thought that a lady like you would have
liked to get as far away as possible from dirt,
and dust, and disagreeable smells?"

"I can face worse inconveniences than
those, where my curiosity is concerned," said
Rosamond. "And I am more curious to see
the uninhabited rooms at Porthgenna, than
to see the Seven Wonders of the World.
Even if we don't settle altogether at the old
house, I feel certain that we shall stay there
for some time."

At that answer, Mrs. Jazeph abruptly
turned away, and asked no more questions.
She retired to a corner of the room near the
door, where the chair-bedstead stood which
the doctor had pointed out to her —occupied
herself for a few minutes in making it ready
for the night —then left it as suddenly as she
had approached it, and began to walk up and
down, once more. This unaccountable
restlessness, which had already surprised
Rosamond, now made her feel rather uneasy—
especially when she once or twice overheard
Mrs. Jazeph talking to herself. Judging by
words and fragments of sentences that were
audible now and then, her mind was still
running, with the most inexplicable persistency,
on the subject of Porthgenna Tower.
As the minutes wore on, and she continued
to walk up and down, and still went on
talking, Rosamond's uneasiness began to
strengthen into something like alarm. She
resolved to awaken Mrs. Jazeph in the least
offensive manner, to a sense of the strangeness
of her own conduct, by noticing that she
was talking, but by not appearing to understand
that she was talking to herself.

"What did you say?" asked Rosamond—
putting the question at a moment when the
nurse's voice was most distinctly betraying
her in the act of thinking aloud.

Mrs. Jazeph stopped, and raised her head
vacantly, as if she had been awakened out of
a heavy sleep.

"I thought you were saying something
more about our old house," continued Rosamond.
"I thought I heard you say that I
ought not to go to Porthgenna, or that you
would not go there in my place, or something
of that sort."

Mrs. Jazeph blushed like a young girl. "I
think you must have been mistaken, ma'am,"
she said, and stooped over the chair-bedstead
again.

Watching her anxiously, Rosamond saw
that, while she was affecting to arrange the
bedstead, she was doing nothing whatever to
prepare it for being slept in. What did that
mean? What did her whole conduct mean for
the last half-hour? As Mrs. Frankland
asked herself those questions, the thrill of a
terrible suspicion turned her cold to the very
roots of her hair. It had never occurred