About noon even Elizabeth’s ignorance was roused up to the conviction that something was very wrong with Mrs. Ascott, and that nurse’s skill could not counteract it.  On her own responsibility she sent, or rather she went to fetch the doctor.  He came; and his fiat threw the whole household into consternation.

Now they knew that the poor lady whose happiness had touched the very stoniest hearts in the establishment hovered upon the brink of the grave.  Now all the women-servants, down to the little kitchen-maid with her dirty apron at her eyes, crept up stairs, one after the other, to the door of what had been such a silent, mysterious room, and listened, unhindered, to the ravings that issued thence.  “Poor Missis,” and the “poor little baby,” were spoken of softly at the kitchen dinner table, and confidentially sympathized over with inquiring tradespeople at the area gate.  A sense of awe and suspense stole over the whole house, gathering thicker hour by hour of that dark December day.

When her mistress was first pronounced “in danger,” Elizabeth, aware that there was no one to act but herself, had taken a brief opportunity to slip from the room and write two letters, one to her master in Edinburgh, and the other to Miss Hilary.  The first she gave to the footman to post; the second she charged him to send by special messenger to Richmond.  But he, being lazily inclined, or else thinking that, as the order was only given by Elizabeth, it was of comparatively little moment, posted them both.  So vainly did the poor girl watch and wait; neither Miss Leaf nor Miss Hilary came.

By night Mrs. Ascott’s delirium began to subside, but her strength was ebbing fast.  Two physicians—­three—­stood by the unconscious woman, and pronounced that all hope was gone, if, indeed, the case had not been hopeless from the beginning.

“Where is her husband?  Has she no relations—­no mother or sisters?” asked the fashionable physician, Sir ——­ ——­, touched by the slight or this poor lady dying alone, with only a nurse and a servant about her.  “If she has, they ought to be sent for immediately.”

Elizabeth ran down stairs, and rousing the old butler from his bed, prevailed on him to start immediately in the carriage to bring back Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary.  It would be midnight before he reached Richmond; still it must be done.

“I’ll do it, my girl,” said he, kindly; “and I’ll tell them as gently as I can.  Never fear.”

When Elizabeth returned to her mistress’s room the doctors were all gone, and nurse, standing at the foot of Mrs. Ascott’s bed, was watching her with the serious look which even a hireling or a stranger wears in the presence of that sight which, however familiar, never grows less awful—­a fellow creature slowly passing from this life into the life unknown.  Elizabeth crept up to the other side.  The change, indescribable yet unmistakable, which comes over a human face when the warrant for