Mrs. Stokes was still her chief resource when she was solitary.
She had a private grief and anxiety of her own, of which she could speak
to none. One day her expected letter from Harry Musgrave did not come;
it was the first time he had failed her since their compact was made.
She wrote herself as usual, and asked why she was neglected. In reply
she received a letter, not from Harry himself, but from his friend
Christie, who was nursing him through an attack of inflammation
occasioned by a chill from remaining in his wet clothes after an upset
on the river. She gathered from it that Harry had been ill and suffering
for nearly a fortnight, but that he was better, though very weak, and
that if Christie had been permitted to do as he wished, Mrs. Musgrave
would have been sent for, but her son was imperative against it. He did
not think it was necessary to put her to that distress and
inconvenience, and as he was now in a fair way of recovery it was his
particular desire that she should not be alarmed and made nervous by any
information of what he had passed through. But he would not keep it from
his dear Bessie, who had greater firmness, and who might rest assured he
was well cared for, as Christie had brought him to his own house, and
his old woman was a capital cook--a very material comfort for a
convalescent.
With a recollection of the warnings of a year and a half ago, Bessie
could not but ponder this news of Harry's illness with grave distress.
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