When there was nothing more to be done in the way of hospital provision (for which a list of everything needed had been sent ahead to Doctor Renshaw)--of flowers, of fair linen--and when, in spite of the spring sun shining in through all the open windows on the bare spotless boards, she could hardly bear the sight and meaning of the transformation which had come over the room, she found herself aimlessly wandering about the big house, filled with a ghostly sense of past and future.

What was to be the real meaning of her life at Mannering?
She could not have deserted the Squire in the present crisis.

She had indeed no false modesty as to what her help would mean, practically, to this household under the shadow of death.

At least she could run the cook and the servants, wrestle with the food difficulties, and keep the Squire's most essential business going.
But afterwards?
She shivered at the word.

Yes, afterwards she would go! And Pamela should reign.
Suddenly, in a back passage, leading from her office to the housekeeper's room, she came upon a boy of fourteen, Forest's hall-boy, really a drudge-of-all-work, on whom essential things depended.