How it all Came Round by L.T. Meade

For many days after that interview in Regent's Park, it seemed that one of the three, who made the little house in Kentish Town so truly like heaven, was to be an angel indeed. Harold's supposed cold had turned to scarlet fever, and the doctor feared that Harold would die.

Immediately after her interview with Charlotte Harman, Mrs. Home went upstairs to learn from the grave lips of the medical man what ailed her boy, and what a hard fight for life or death he had before him. She was a brave woman, and whatever anguish might lie underneath, no tears filled her eyes as she looked at his flushed face. When the doctor had gone, she stole softly from the sick-room, and going to the drawing-room where Hinton was already in possession, she tapped at the door.