"Do you know that I have to find fault with you?" resumed Thomas Godolphin, after a pause. "You have not been true to me, Ethel."
She turned her eyes upon him in surprise.
"Did you not promise me--did you not promise Mr. Snow, not to enter your sister's chamber while the fever was upon her? I hear that you were in it often: her head nurse."
A hot colour flushed into Ethel's face. "Forgive me, Thomas," she whispered; "I could not help myself. Sarah Anne--it was on the third morning of her illness, when I was getting up--suddenly began to cry out for me very much, and mamma came to my bedroom and desired me to go to her. I said that Mr. Snow had forbidden me, and that I had promised you. It made mamma angry. She asked if I could be so selfish as to regard a promise before Sarah Anne's life; that she might die if I thwarted her: and she took me by the arm and pulled me in. I would have told you, Thomas, that I had broken my word; I wished to tell you; but mamma forbade me to do so."
Thomas Godolphin stood looking at her. There was nothing to answer: he had _known_, in his deep and trusting love, that the fault had not lain with Ethel. She mistook his silence, thinking he was vexed.
"You know, Thomas, so long as I am here in mamma's home, her child, it is to her that I owe obedience," she gently pleaded. "As soon as I shall be your wife, I shall owe it and give it implicitly to you."
"And it has produced no ill consequences," she resumed. "I did not catch the fever. Had I found myself growing in the least ill, I should have sent for you and told you the truth."
"Ethel?" he impulsively cried--very impulsively for calm Thomas Godolphin; "had you caught the fever, I should never have forgiven those who led you into danger. I _could_ not lose you."
Lady Sarah had been calling to Mr. Godolphin. Thinking she was not heard, she now came downstairs and entered the room, wringing her hands; her eyes were overflowing, her sharp thin nose was redder than usual. "Oh dear! I don't know what we shall do with her!" she uttered. "She is so ill, and it makes her so fretful. Mr. Godolphin, nothing will satisfy her now but she must see you."
"She will, she says. I told her you were departing for Scotland, and she burst out crying, and said if she were to die she should never see you again. Do you mind going in? You are not afraid?"