A FEW days had passed and a great change had come. Charles Fairfield, the master of the Grange, lay in his bed, and the Wykeford doctor admitted to Alice that he could not say what might happen. It was a very grave case—fever—and the patient could not have been worse handled in those early days of the attack, on which sometimes so much depends.

People went to and fro’ on tiptoe, and talked in whispers, and the patient moaned, and prattled, unconscious generally of all that was passing. Awful hours and days of suspense! The Doctor said, and perhaps he was right, to kind Lady Wyndale, who came over to see Alice, and learned with consternation the state of things, that, under the special circumstances, her nerves having been so violently acted upon by terror, this diversion of pain and thought into quite another channel might be the best thing, on the whole, that could have happened to her.

It was now the sixth day of this undetermined ordeal.

Alice watched the Doctor’s countenance with her very soul in her eyes, as he made his inspection, standing at the bed-side, and now and then putting a question to Dulcibella or to Alice, or to the nurse whom he had sent to do duty in the sick-room from Wykeford.

“Well?” whispered poor Alice, who had accompanied him downstairs, and pale as death, drew him into the sitting-room, and asked her question.

“Well, Doctor, what do you think today?”

“Not much to report. Very little change. We must have patience, you know, for a day or two; and you need not to be told, my dear ma’am, that good nursing is half the battle, and in better hands he need not be; I’m only afraid that you are undertaking too much yourself. That woman, Marks, you may rely upon, implicitly; a most respectable and intelligent person; I never knew her to make a mistake yet, and she has been more than ten years at this work.”

“Yes, I’m sure she is. I like her very much. And don’t you think him a little better?” she pleaded.

“Well, you know, as long as he holds his own and don’t lose ground, he is better; that’s all we can say; not to be worse, as time elapses, is in effect, to be better; that you may say.”

She was looking earnestly into the clear blue eyes of the old man, who turned them k............