Mr. Bartley met them at the door, and, owing to Hope’s presence, was more demonstrative than usual.  He seemed much pleased at Mary’s return, and delighted at her appearance.

“Well,” said he, “I am glad I sent you away for a week.  We have all missed you, my dear, but the change has set you up again, I never saw you look better.  Now you are well, we must try and keep you well.”

* * * * *

We must leave the reader to imagine the mixed feelings with which Mrs. Walter Clifford laid her head upon the pillow that night, and we undertake to say that the female readers, at all events, will supply this blank in our narrative much better than we could, though we were to fill a chapter with that subject alone.

* * * * *

Passion is a terrible enemy to mere affection.  Walter Clifford loved his father dearly, yet for twenty-four hours he had almost forgotten him.  But the moment he turned his horse’s head toward Clifford Hall, uneasiness and something very like remorse began to seize him.  Suppose his father had asked for him, and wondered where he was, and felt himself deserted and abandoned in his dying moments.  He spurred his horse to a gallop, and soon reached Clifford Hall.  As he was afraid to go straight to his father’s room, he went at once to old Baker, and said, in an agitated voice,

“One word, John—­is he alive?”

“Yes, sir, he is,” said John, gravely, and rather sternly.

“Has he asked for me?”

“More than once or twice, sir.”

Walter sank into a chair, and covered his face with his hands.  This softened the old servant, whose manner till then had been sullen and grim.

“You need not fret, Mr. Walter,” said he; “it’s all right.  In course I know where you have been.”

Walter looked up alarmed.

“I mean in a general way,” said the old man.  “You have been a-courting of an angel.  I know her, sir, and I hope to be her servant some day; and if you was to marry any but her, I’d leave service altogether, and so would Rhoda Milton; but, Mr. Walter, sir, there’s a time for everything:  I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so.  However you are here now, and I was wide-awake, and I have made it all right, sir.”

“That’s impossible,” said Walter.  “How could you make it right with my poor dear father, if in his last moments he felt himself neglected?”

“But he didn’t feel himself neglected.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Walter.

“Well, sir,” said old Baker, “I’m an old servant, and I have done my duty to father and son according to my lights:  I told him a lie.”

“A lie, John!” said Walter.

“A thundering lie,” said John, rather aggressively.  “I don’t know as I ever told a greater lie in all my life.  I told him you was gone up to London to fetch a doctor.”

Walter grasped John Baker’s hand.  “God bless you, old man,” said he, “for taking that on your conscience!  Well, you sha’n’t have yourself to reproach for my fault.  I know a first-class gout doctor in London; he has cured it more than once.  I’ll wire him down this minute; you’ll dispatch the message, and I’ll go to my father.”