CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER FROM THE "ALLIANCE" OFFICE.
Upon the evening of the day on which Mrs.Halliday and the dentist had discussed the propriety of calling in a strange doctor, George Sheldon came again to see his sick friend.

He was quicker to perceive the changes in the invalid than the members of the household, who saw him daily and hourly, and he perceived a striking change for the worse to-night.
He took care, however, to suffer no evidence of alarm or surprise to appear in the sick chamber.

He talked to his friend in the usual cheery way; sat by the bedside for half an hour; did his best to arouse Tom from a kind of stupid lethargy, and to encourage Mrs.Halliday, who shared the task of nursing her husband with brisk Nancy Woolper, an invaluable creature in a sick-room.

But he failed in both attempts; the dull apathy of the invalid was not to be dispelled by the most genial companionship, and Georgy's spirits had been sinking lower and lower all day as her fears increased.
She would fain have called in a strange doctor--she would fain have sought for comfort and consolation from some new quarter.

But she was afraid of offending Philip Sheldon; and she was afraid of alarming her husband.