But Miss Paget is a very sensible
young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is
not strong."
"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice.
"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr.
Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!"
Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather
sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in
white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she
looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to
poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS.
Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the
object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several
people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which
he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa
who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated.
Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest.
And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead
load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first
perceived the change in his dear one's face.
There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who
watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the
care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover.
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