with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious
matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again
become a mother.

When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a mere
delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her last
child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death
of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now
arrived--all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her
mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the
necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk,
at the same time, from alarming her daughters by summoning a London
physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the
circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was
confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to
take place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to
say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her;
but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than
he supposed, and she knew that he looked to the future with more than
ordinary doubt.

Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that they
might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. She had
felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, until those
suspicions had been confirmed--and she now recoiled, with even greater
reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any way alarmed about
her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for the present, and to
wait hopefully till the summer came. In the meantime they would all, she
trusted, be happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month, which Mr.