Therefore I ask no pity for Elizabeth, because ere she had time to collect herself, and realize in her poor confused mind that she had indeed said good by to Tom, given him up and parted from him forever, she was summoned to her mistress’s room, there to hold a colloquy outside the door with the seriously-perplexed nurse.

One of those sudden changes had come which sometimes, after all seems safe, strike terror into a rejoicing household, and end by carrying away, remorseless, the young wife from her scarcely tasted bliss, the mother of many children from her close circle of happy duties and yearning loves.

Mrs. Ascott was ill.  Either she had taken cold or been too much excited, or, in the overconfidence of her recovery, some slight neglect had occurred—­some trifle which nobody thinks of till afterward, and which yet proves the fatal cause, “the little pin” that

        “Bores through the castle wall”

of mortal hope, and King Death enters in all his awful state.

Nobody knew it or dreaded it; for though Mrs. Ascott was certainly ill, she was not at first very ill; and there being no telegraphs in those days no one thought of sending for either her husband or her sisters.  But that very hour, when Elizabeth went up to her mistress, and saw the flush on her cheek and the rest-less expression of her eye, King Death had secretly crept in at the door of the mansion in Russell Square.

The patient was carefully removed back into her bed.  She said little, except once, looking up uneasily—­

“I don’t feel quite myself, Elizabeth.”

And when her servant soothed her in the long-familiar way, telling her she would be better in the morning, she smiled contentedly, and turned to go to sleep.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not go to her bed, but sat behind the curtain, motionless, for an hour or more.

Toward the middle of the night, when her baby was brought to her, and the child instinctively refused its natural food, and began screaming violently, Mrs. Ascott’s troubled look returned.

“What is the matter?  What are you doing, nurse?  I won’t be parted from my baby—­I won’t, I say!”

And when, to sooth her, the little thing was again put into her arms, and again turned from her, a frightened expression came into the mother’s face.

“Am I going to be ill?—­is baby—­”

She stopped; and as nurse determinately carried it away, she attempted no resistance, only followed it across the room with eager eyes.  It was the last glimmer of reason there.  From that time her, mind began to wander, and before morning she was slightly delirious.  Still nobody apprehended danger.  Nobody really knew any thing about the matter except nurse, and she, with a selfish fear of being blamed for carelessness, resisted sending for the doctor till his usual hour of calling.  In that large house, as in many other large houses, every body’s business was nobody’s business, and a member of the family, even the mistress, might easily be sick or dying in some room therein, while all things else went on just as usual, and no one was any the wiser.