has sacrificed all the world to her love for me, who is the mother of my children, and the partner of my sorrows and the wife of my bosom, even she can not change me in this, though she pleads with the eloquence of all her wants. Not even for her can I hold out my hand for a dole."
They had now come back to the door of the house, and Mr. Crawley, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was preparing to enter.
"Will Mrs. Crawley be able to see me if I come in?" said the dean.
"Oh, stop—no—you had better not do so," said Mr. Crawley. "You, no doubt, might be subject to infection, and then Mrs. Arabin would be frightened."
"I do not care about it in the least," said the dean.
"But it is of no use; you had better not. Her room, I fear, is quite unfit for you to see; and the whole house, you know, may be infected."
Dr. Arabin by this time was in the sitting-room; but, seeing that his friend was really anxious that he should not go farther, he did not persist.
"It will be a comfort to us, at any rate, to know that Miss Robarts is with her."
"The young lady is very good—very good indeed," said Crawley; "but I trust she will return to her home to-morrow. It is impossible that she should remain in so poor a house as mine. There will be nothing here of all the things that she will want."
The dean thought that Lucy Robarts's wants during her present occupation of nursing would not be so numerous as to make her continued sojourn in Mrs. Crawley's sickroom impossible, and therefore took his leave with a satisfied conviction that the poor lady would not be left wholly to the somewhat unskillful nursing of her husband.
And now there were going to be wondrous doings in West Barsetshire, and men's minds were much disturbed. The fiat had gone forth from the high places, and the queen had dissolved her faithful Commons. The giants, finding that they could effect little or nothing with the old House,
