hardly able to yield up its life merely because its owner was
anxious to part with it.

After a fortnight's severe illness, hovering all the time between
hope and fear, the doctor came one day, and looked at him hard.

"How is he?" Lady Gildersleeve asked, seeing him hold his breath
and consider.

To her great surprise the doctor answered, "Better; against all
hope, better." And indeed Sir Gilbert was once more convalescent.
A week or two abroad, it was said, would restore him completely.

Then Elma had another terrible source of doubt. Would the doctors
order Sir Gilbert abroad so long that he would be out of England
when the trial took place? If so, he might miss many pricks of
remorse. She must take some active steps to arouse his conscience.

Sir Gilbert, himself, now recovering fast, fought hard, as well he
might, for such leave of absence. He was quite unfit, he said, to
return to his judicial work so soon. Though he had said nothing
about it in public before (this was the tenor of his talk) he was
a man of profound but restrained feelings, and he had felt, he would
admit, the absence of Gwendoline's lover--especially when combined
with the tragic death of Colonel Kelmscott, the father, and the
memory of the unpleasantness that had once subsisted, through the
Colonel's blind obstinacy, between the two houses. This sudden news
of the young man's return had given him a nervous shock of which
few would have believed him capable. "You wouldn't think to look
at me," Sir Gilbert said plaintively, smoothing down his bedclothes