Joseph got up and poured a glassful of medicine from the bottle by the bed. He held it to her docile lips and she drank unquestioningly. Then he called Eleanore.

The maid ran in, her black wool dress hanging slack upon her once ample body, her eyes rimmed with red. 'Elle est pire, monsieur?' she whispered.

He nodded. 'She is more feverish.'

He walked through the house onto the porch. The ocean lay there in front of him, quiet and gray-blue in the twilight. He dropped down on a step and stared at it dully.

There must be someone who could help her. He could not reach her. During the first ghastly days after the little boy died, the women of his family had been there—Mrs. Alston and Sally and Polly. She had refused to see them, as she refused to leave the room where the child had died.

Gampy was buried at the Oaks in the family burying ground. Joseph had understood her anguished refusal to be present when the small coffin was placed, but he had tried to persuade her to go to the burial service with the family. All Saints' Parish Church had been beautiful with flowers, and the words of the service had given him a little comfort. They might have helped her too. But she would not go.

There had been wild grief at first, an agony of tears, far less terrifying than this devastating quiet that had now settled on her. Day after day she lay on the bed, gently answering when spoken to, but without will or life of her own. Sometimes, when Joseph tried to rouse her, she gathered herself together as though she listened. But not to him—straining for some voice he could not hear, when all that broke the silence was the monotonous crash of the surf.

Gampy's illness had been so cruelly short. He came into the house from playing on the sands and his teeth were chattering, his small body shaking with chill.

'It is the ague again,' said Theo, troubled but not really anxious. 'He should not have ridden back to the plantation with you last week. Even in the daytime, there is fever about. '

'Give him the Peruvian bark,' said Joseph.

'I think not'. She put her hand on the child's head, frowning. 'I don't believe that bitter concoction does any good, and he hates it. I shall try calomel.'

'The bark is better,' argued Joseph irritably. 'All the family use it for chills and fever. '

'And does it stop them?' she asked. 'The agues go for a while, but they come back. I believe that stuff is useless.'