' Where is he?'
' Down at Brighton with his mother.'
' Judy, you must tell me,' said her sister; ' it is merely saving me a couple of hours of horrid anxiety. I shall go down to see him this afternoon. Now, what is it? Is it lungs? I will tell Charlie I forced you to tell me.'
' There is no use in my not answering you,' said Judy. ' Yes, it is that.'
' Serious?'
' Consumption is always serious.'
Sybil said nothing for a moment.
' I shall go down this afternoon,' she said. ' Why is he at Brighton? Why is he not at some proper place?'
' He went to Sheringham for a time, but he left it.'
' But he has got to get better,' said Sybil quickly. ' He must do what is sensible.'
Judy glanced up at her a moment.
' As things at present stand, he does not much want to get better,' she said.
Sybil turned, and looked at her long and steadily.
' You mean me?' she asked.
There was silence. Sybil went to the writing-table and wrote a telegram, while her sister took up the paper she had dropped and looked at it mechanically. Almost immediately a short paragraph struck her eye, but her mind, dwelling on other things, did not at once take in its significance.
' Yet you advised me yourself not to marry him,' said Sybil, as she rang the bell.
' I know I did; nor have I really changed my mind. But it is in your power to make him want to live.'
Sybil turned on her rather fiercely.
' You have no right to load me with such responsibilities,' she said. ' It is not my fault that he loves me; it is not my fault that I am as I am.'
