"He is _dangerously_ ill, did you say?" spoke poor Helen, biting her lips to hide their tremor.
"Almost more than dangerous: I fear there is little hope left," he answered, never of course suspecting who Helen was. "Good-afternoon."
She followed him with her eyes as he turned to the cloister-door: and then moved away towards the north entrance, looking as one dazed.
"Oh, but it won't do. It won't, indeed, Helen."
"_I am going to see him_," she answered, in her most wilful tone. "Don't you hear that he is dying? I know he is; I feel it instinctively as a sure and certain fact. If you have a spark of goodness you'll come with me, Johnny Ludlow. It's all the same--whether you do or not."
I looked around for our party. They had disappeared up the other aisle under convoy of the bedesman, leaving Helen and myself to follow at our leisure; or perhaps not noticing our absence. Helen, marching away with quick steps, passed out at the grand entrance.
"It is not _safe_ for you to go, Helen," I remonstrated, as we went round the graveyard and so up High Street. "You would catch the fever from him."
"I wish you'd be quiet. Can't you _see_ what I am suffering?"
The sweetest sight to me just then would have been Lady Whitney, or any one else holding authority over Helen. I seemed responsible for any ill that might ensue: and yet, what could I do?
"Helen, pray listen to a word of reason! See the position you put me in. A fever is not a light thing to risk."
"I don't believe that typhoid fever is catching. He did not say typhus."
"I don't know that I am afraid. But I should not run into it by choice. And I'm sure you ought not to."
We were just then passing that large druggist's shop that the Squire always called Featherstonhaugh's--just because Mr. Featherstonhaugh once kept it. Helen darted across the street and into it.
"A pound of camphor," said she, to the young man behind the right-hand counter.
"A pound of camphor!" he echoed. "Did you say _a pound_, ma'am?"
"Is it too much?" asked Helen. "I want some to put about me: I am going to see some one who is ill."
It ended in his giving her two ounces. As we left the shop she handed part of it to me, stowing the rest about herself. And whether it was thanks to the camphor, I don't know, but neither of us took any harm.