MR. ROLFE surveyed the two women with a mild, inoffensive, ox-like
gaze, and invited them to be seated with homely civility.
He sat down at his desk, and turning to Lady Bassett, said, rather
dreamily, “One moment, please: let me look at the case and my notes.”
First his homely appearance, and now a certain languor about his
manner, discouraged Lady Bassett more than it need; for all artists
must pay for their excitements with occasional languor. Her hands
trembled, and she began to gulp and try not to cry.
Mr. Rolfe observed directly, and said, rather kindly, “You are
agitated; and no wonder.”
He then opened a sort of china closet, poured a few drops of a
colorless liquid from a tiny bottle into a wine-glass, and filled the
glass with water from a filter. “Drink that, if you please.”
She looked at him with her eyes brimming. _“Must_ I?”
“Yes; it will do you good for once in a way. It is only Ignatia.”
She drank it by degrees, and a tear along with it that fell into the
glass.
Meantime Mr. Rolfe had returned to his notes and examined them. He then
addressed her, half stiffly, half kindly:
“Lady Bassett, whatever may be your husband's condition--whether his
illness is mental or bodily, or a mixture of the two--his clandestine
examination by bought physicians, and his violent capture, the natural
effect of which must have been to excite him and retard his cure, were
wicked and barbarous acts, contrary to God's law and the common law of
England, and, indeed, to all human law except our shallow, incautious
Statutes de Lunatico: they were an insult to yourself, who ought at
least to have been consulted, for your rights are higher and purer than
Richard Bassett's; therefore, as a wife bereaved of your husband by
fraud and violence and the bare letter of a paltry statute whose spirit
has been violated, you are quite justified in coming to me or to any
public man you think can help your husband and you.” Then, with a
certain _bonhomie,_ “So lay aside your nervousness; let us go into this
matter sensibly, like a big man and a little man, or like an old woman
and a young woman, whichever you prefer.”
Lady Bassett looked at him and smiled assent. She felt a great deal
more at her ease after this opening.
“I dare not advise you yet. I must know more than Mr. Angelo has told
me. Will you answer my questions frankly?”
“I will try, sir.”
“Whose idea was it confining Sir Charles Bassett to the house so much?”
“His own. He felt himself unfit for society.”
“Did he describe his ailment to you then?”
“Yes.”
“All the better; what did he say?”
“He said that, at times, a cloud seemed to come into his head, and then
he lost all power of mind; and he could not bear to be seen in that
condition.”
“This was after the epileptic seizure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humph! Now will you tell me how Mr. Bassett, by mere words, could so
enrage Sir Charles as to give him a fit?”
Lady Bassett hesitated.
“What did he say to Sir Charles?”
“He did not speak to him. His child and nurse were there, and he called
out loud, for Sir Charles to hear, and told the nurse to hold up his
child to look at his inheritance.”
“Malicious fool! But did this enrage Sir Charles so much as to give him
a fit?”
“Yes.”
“He must be very sensitive.”
“On that subject.”
Mr. Rolfe was silent; and now, for the first time, appeared to think
intently.
His study bore fruit, apparently; for he turned to Lady Bassett and
said, suddenly, “What is the strangest thing Sir Charles has said of
late--the very strangest?”
Lady Bassett turned red, and then pale, and made no reply.
Mr. Rolfe rose and walked up to Mary Wells.
“What is the maddest thing your master has ever said?”
Mary Wells, instead of replying, looked at her mistress.
The writer instantly put his great body between them. “Come, none of
that,” said he. “I don't want a falsehood--I want the truth.”
“La, sir, I don't know. My master he is not mad, I'm sure. The queerest
thing he ever said was--he did say at one time 'twas writ on his face
as he had no children.”
“Ah! And that is why he would not go abroad, perhaps.”
“That was one reason, sir, I do suppose.” Mr. Rolfe put his hands
behind his back and walked thoughtfully and rather disconsolately back
to his seat.
“Humph!” said he. Then, after a pause, “Well, well; I know the worst
now; that is one comfort. Lady Bassett, you really must be candid with
me. Consider: good advice is like a tight glove; it fits the
circumstances, and it does not fit other circumstances. No man advises
so badly on a false and partial statement as I do, for the very reason
that my advice is a close fit. Even now I can't understand Sir
Charles's despair of having children of his own.”
The writer then turned his looks on the two women, with an entire
absence of expression; the sense of his eyes was turned inward, though
the orbs were directed toward his visitors.
With this lack-luster gaze, and in the tone of thoughtful soliloquy, he
said, “Has Sir Charles Bassett no eyes? and are there women so furtive,
so secret, or so bashful, they do not tell their husbands?”
Lady Bassett turned with a scared look to Mary Wells, and that young
woman showed her usual readiness. She actually came to Mr. Rolfe and
half whispered to him, “If you please, sir, gentlemen are blind, and my
lady she is very bashful; but Sir Charles knows it now; he have known
it a good while; and it was a great comfort to him; he was getting
better, sir, when the villains took him--ever so much better.”
This solution silenced Mr. Rolfe, though it did not quite satisfy him.
He fastened on Mary Wells's last statement. “Now tell me: between the
day when those two doctors got into his apartment and the day of his
capture, how long?”
“About a fortnight.”
“And in that particular fortnight was there a marked improvement?”
“La, yes, sir; was there not, my lady?”
“Indeed there was, sir. He was beginning to take walks with me in the
garden, and rides in an open carriage. He was getting better every day;
and oh, sir, that is what breaks my heart! I was curing my darling so
fast, and now they will do all they can to destroy him. Their not
letting his wife see him terrifies me.”
“I think I can explain that. Now tell me--what time do you expect--a
certain event?”
Lady Bassett blushed and cast a hasty glance at the speaker; but he had
a piece of paper before him, and was preparing to take down her reply,
with the innocent face of a man who had asked a simple and necessary
question in the way of business.
Then Lady Bassett looked at Mary Wells, and this look Mr. Rolfe
surprised, because he himself looked up to see why the lady hesitated.
After an expressive glance between the mistress and maid, the lady
said, almost inaudibly, “More than three months;” and then she blushed
all over.
Mr. Rolfe looked at the two women a moment, and seemed a little puzzled
at their telegraphing each other on such a subject; but he coolly noted
down Lady Bassett's reply on a card about the size of a foolscap sheet,
and then set himself to write on the same card the other facts he had
elicited.
While he was doing this very slowly, with great care and pains, the
lady was eying him like a zoologist studying some new animal. The
simplicity and straightforwardness of his last question won by degrees
upon her judgment and reconciled her to her Inquisitor, the more so as
he was quiet but intense, and his whole soul in her case. She began to
respect his simple straightforwardness, his civility without a grain of
gallantry, and his caution in eliciting all the facts before he would
advise.
After he had written down his synopsis, looking all the time as if his
life depended on its correctness, he leaned back, and his ordinary but
mobile countenance was transfigured into geniality.
“Come,” said he, “grandmamma has pestered you with questions enough;
now you retort--ask me anything--speak your mind: these things should
be attacked in every form, and sifted with every sieve.”
Lady Bassett hesitated a moment, but at last responded to this
invitation.
“Sir, one thing that discourages me cruelly--my solicitor seems so
inferior to Mr. Bassett's. He can think of nothing but objections; and
so he does nothing, and lets us be trampled on: it is his being unable
to cope with Mr. Bassett's solicitor, Mr. Wheeler, that has led me in
my deep distress to trouble you, whom I had not the honor of knowing.”
“I understand your ladyship perfectly. Mr. Oldfield is a respectable
solicitor, and Wheeler is a sharp country practitioner; and--to use my
favorite Americanism--you feel like fighting with a blunt knife against
a sharp one.”
“That is my feeling, sir, and it drives me almost wild sometimes.”
“For your comfort, then, in my earlier litigations--I have had sixteen
lawsuits for myself and other oppressed people--I had often that very
impression; but the result always corrected it. Legal battles are like
other battles: first you have a skirmish or two, and then a great
battle in court. Now sharp attorneys are very apt to win the skirmish
and lose the battle. I see a general of this stamp in Mr. Wheeler, and
you need not fear him much. Of course an antagonist is never to be
despised; but I would rather have Wheeler against you than Oldfield. An
honest man like Oldfield blunders into wisdom, the Lord knows how. Your
Wheelers seldom get beyond cunning; and cunning does not see far enough
to cope with men of real sagacity and forethought in matters so
complicated as this. Oldfield, acting for Bassett, would have pushed
rapidly on to an examination by the court. You would have evaded it,
and put yourself in the wrong; and the inquiry, well urged, might have
been adverse to Sir Charles. Wheeler has taken a more cunning and
violent course--it strikes more terror, does more immediate harm; but
what does it lead to? Very little; and it disarms them of their
sharpest weapon, the immediate inquiry; for we could now delay and
greatly prejudice an inquiry on the very ground of the outrage and
unnecessary violence; and could demand time to get the patient as well
as he was before the outrage. And, indeed, the court is very jealous of
those who begin by going to a judge, and then alter their minds, and
try to dispose of the case themselves. And to make matters worse, here
they do it by straining an Act of Parliament opposed to equity.”
“I wish it may prove so, sir; but, meantime, Mr. Wheeler is active, Mr.
Oldfield is passive. He has not an idea. He is a mere negative.”
“Ah, that is because he is out of his groove. A smattering of law is
not enough here. It wants a smattering of human nature too.”
“Then, sir, would you advise me to part with Mr. Oldfield?”
“No. Why make an enemy? Besides, he is the vehicle of communication
with the other side. You must simply ignore him for a time.”
“But is there nothing I can do, sir? for it is this cruel inactivity
that kills me. Pray advise me--you know all now.”
Mr. Rolfe, thus challenged, begged for a moment's delay.
“Let us be silent a minute,” said he, “and think hard.”
And, to judge by his face, he did think with great intensity.
“Lady Bassett,” said he, very gravely, “I assume that every fact you
and Mr. Angelo have laid before me is true, and no vital part is kept
back. Well, then, your present course is--Delay. Not the weak delay of
those who procrastinate what cannot be avoided; but the wise delay of a
general who can bring up overpowering forces, only give him time.
Understand me, there is more than one game on the cards; but I prefer
the surest. We could begin fighting openly to-morrow; but that would be
risking too much for too little. The law's delay, the insolence of
office, the up-hill and thorny way, would hurt Sir Charles's mind at
present. The apathy, the cruelty, the trickery, the routine, the hot
and cold fits of hope and fear, would poison your blood, and perhaps
lose Sir Charles the heir he pines for. Besides, if we give battle
to-day we fight the heir at law; but in three or four months we may
have him on our side, and trustees appointed by you. By that time, too,
Sir Charles will have got over that abominable capture, and be better
than he was a week ago, constantly soothed and consoled--as he will
be--by the hope of offspring. When the right time comes, that moment we
strike, and with a sledge-hammer. No letters to the commissioners then,
no petitioning Chancery to send a jury into the asylum, stronghold of
prejudice. I will cut your husband in two. Don't be alarmed. I will
merely give him, with your help, an _alter ego,_ who shall effect his
liberation and ruin Richard Bassett--ruin him in damages and costs, and
drive him out of the country, perhaps. Meantime you are not to be a lay
figure, or a mere negative.”
“Oh, sir, I am so glad of that!”
“Far from that: you will act defensively. Mr. Bassett has one chance;
you must be the person to extinguish it. Injudicious treatment in the
asylum might retard Sir Charles's cure; their leeches and their
sedatives, administered by sucking apothecaries, who reason it _a
priori,_ instead of watching the effect of these things on the patient,
might seriously injure your husband, for his disorder is connected with
a weak circulation of blood in the vessels of the brain. We must
therefore guard against that at once. To work, then. Who keeps this
famous asylum?”
“Dr. Suaby.”
“Suaby? I know that name. He has been here, I think. I must look in my
Index rerum et hominum. Suaby? Not down. Try Asyla.--Asyla; 'Suaby: see
letter-book for the year--, p. 368.' An old letter-book. I must go
elsewhere for that.”
He went out, and after some time returned with a folio letter-book.
“Here are two letters to me from Dr. Suaby, detailing his system and
inviting me to spend a week at his asylum. Come, come; Sir Charles is
with a man who does not fear inspection; for at this date I was bitter
against private asylums--rather indiscriminately so, I fear. Stay! he
visited me; I thought so. Here's a description of him: 'A pale,
thoughtful man, with a remarkably mild eye: is against restraint of
lunatics, and against all punishment of them--Quixotically so. Being
cross-examined, declares that if a patient gave him a black eye he
would not let a keeper handle him roughly, being irresponsible.' No
more would I, if I could give him a good licking myself. Please study
these two letters closely; you may get a clew how to deal with the
amiable writer in person.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Rolfe,” said Lady Bassett, flushing all over. She
was so transported at having something to do. She quietly devoured the
letters, and after she had read them said a load of fears was now taken
off her mind.
Mr. Rolfe shook his head. “You must not rely on Dr. Suaby too much. In
a prison or an asylum each functionary is important in exact proportion
to his nominal insignificance; and why? Because the greater his nominal
unimportance the more he comes in actual contact with the patient. The
theoretical scale runs thus: 1st. The presiding physician. 2d. The
medical subordinates. 3d. The keepers and nurses. The practical scale
runs thus: 1st. The keepers and nurses. 2d. The medical attendants. 3d.
The presiding physician.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, sir; for when I went to the asylum, and
the medical attendant, Mr. Salter, would not let me see my husband. I
gave his keeper and the nurse a little money to be kind to him in his
confinement.”
“You did! Yet you come here for advice? This is the way: a man
discourses and argues, and by profound reasoning--that is, by what he
thinks profound, and it isn't--arrives at the right thing; and lo! a
woman, with her understanding heart and her hard, good sense, goes and
does that wise thing humbly, without a word. SURSUM CORDA!--_Cheer up,
loving heart!”_ shouted he, like the roar of a lion in ecstasies; “you
have done a masterstroke--without Oldfield, or Rolfe, or any other
man.”
Lady Bassett clasped her hands with joy, and some electric fire seemed
to run through her veins; for she was all sensibilities, and this
sudden triumphant roaring out of strong words was quite new to her, and
carried her away.
“Well,” said this eccentric personage, cooling quite as suddenly as he
had fired, “the only improvement I can suggest is, be a little more
precise at your next visit. Promise his keepers twenty guineas apiece
the day Sir Charles is _cured;_ and promise them ten guineas apiece not
to administer one drop of medicine for the next two months; and, of
course, no leech nor blister. The cursed sedatives they believe in are
destruction to Sir Charles Bassett. His circulation must not be made
too slow one day, and too fast the next, which is the effect of a
sedative, but made regular by exercise and nourishing food. So, then,
you will square the keepers by their cupidity; the doctor is on the
right side _per se._ Shall we rely on these two, and ignore the medical
attendants? No; why throw a chance away? What is the key to these
medical attendants? Hum! Try flunkyism. I have great faith in British
flunkyism. Pay your next visit with four horses, two outriders, and
blazing liveries. Don't dress in perfect taste like _that;_ go in finer
clothes than you ever wore in the morning, or ought to wear, except at
a wedding; go not as a petitioner, but as a queen; and dazzle snobs;
the which being dazzled, then tickle their vanity: don't speak of Sir
Charles as an injured man, nor as a man unsound in mind, but a
gentleman who is rather ill; 'but _now,_ gentlemen, I feel your
remarkable skill will soon set him right.' Your husband runs that one
risk; make him safe: a few smiles and a little flattery will do it; and
if not, why, fight with all a woman's weapons. Don't be too nice: we
must all hold a candle to the devil once in our lives. A wife's love
sanctifies a woman's arts in fighting with a villain and disarming
donkeys.”
“Oh, I wish I was there now!”
“You are excited, madam,” said he, severely. “That is out of place--in
a deliberative assembly.”
“No, no; only I want to be there, doing all this for my dear husband.”
“You are very excited; and it is my fault. You must be hungry too: you
have come a journey. There will be a reaction, and then you will be
hysterical. Your temperament is of that kind.”
He rang a bell and ordered his maid-servant to bring some beef-wafers
and a pint of dry Champagne.
Lady Bassett remonstrated, but he told her to be quiet; “for,” said he,
“I have a smattering of medicine, as well as of law and of human
nature. Sir Charles must correspond with you. Probably he has already
written you six letters complaining of this monstrous act--a sane man
incarcerated. Well, that class of letter goes into a letter-box in the
hall of an asylum, but it never reaches its address. Please take a pen
and write a formula.” He dictated as follows:
“MY DEAR LOVE--The trifling illness I had when I came here is beginning
to give way to the skill and attention of the medical gentlemen here.
They are all most kind and attentive: the place, as it is conducted, is
a credit to the country.”
Lady Bassett's eyes sparkled. “Oh, Mr. Rolfe, is not this rather
artful?”
“And is it not artful to put up a letter-box, encourage the writing of
letters, and then open them, and suppress whatever is disagreeable? May
every man who opens another man's letter find that letter a trap. Here
comes your medicine. You never drink champagne in the middle of the
day, of course?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then it will be all the better medicine.”
He made both mistress and maid eat the thin slices of beef and drink a
glass of champagne.
While they were thus fortifying themselves he wrote his address on some
stamped envelopes, and gave them to Lady Bassett, and told her she had
better write to him at once if anything occurred. “You must also write
to me if you really cannot get to see your husband. Then I will come
down myself, with the public press at my back. But I am sure that will
not be necessary in Dr. Suaby's asylum. He is a better Christian than I
am, confound him for it! You went too soon; your husband had been
agitated by the capture; Suaby was away; Salter had probably applied
what he imagined to be soothing remedies, leeches--a blister--morphia.
Result, the patient was so much worse than he was before they touched
him that Salter was ashamed to let you see him. Having really excited
him, instead of soothing him, Sawbones Salter had to pretend that _you_
would excite him. As if creation contained any mineral, drug simple,
leech, Spanish fly, gadfly, or showerbath, so soothing as a loving wife
is to a man in affliction. New reading of an old song:
'If the heart of a man is oppressed with cares,
It makes him much worse when a woman appears.'
“Go to-morrow; you will see him. He will be worse than he was; but not
much. Somebody will have told him that his wife put him in there--”
“Oh! oh!”
“And he won't have believed it. His father was a Bassett; his mother a
Le Compton; his great-great-great-grandmother was a Rolfe: there is no
cur's blood in him. After the first shock he will have found the spirit
and dignity of a gentleman to sustain adversity: these men of fashion
are like that; they are better steel than women--and writers.”
When he had said this he indicated by his manner that he thought he had
exhausted the subject, and himself.
Lady Bassett rose and said, “Then, sir, I will take my leave; and oh! I
am sorry I have not your eloquent pen or your eloquent tongue to thank
you. You have interested yourself in a stranger--you have brought the
power of a great mind to bear on our distress. I came here a widow--now
I feel a wife again. Your good words have warmed my very heart. I can
only pray God to bless you, sir.”
“Pray say no more, madam,” said Mr. Rolfe, hastily. “A gentleman cannot
be always writing lies; an hour or two given to truth and justice is a
wholesome diversion. At all events, don't thank me till my advice has
proved worth it.”
He rang the bell; the servant came, and showed the way to the street
door. Mr. Rolfe followed them to the passage only, whence he bowed
ceremoniously once more to Lady Bassett as she went out.
As she passed into the street she heard a fearful clatter. It was her
counselor tearing back to his interrupted novel like a distracted
bullock.
“Well, I don't think much of _he,”_ said Mary Wells.
Lady Bassett was mute to that, and all the journey home very absorbed
and taciturn, impregnated with ideas she could not have invented, but
was more able to execute than the inventor. She was absorbed in
digesting Rolfe's every word, and fixing his map in her mind, and
filling in details to his outline; so small-talk stung her: she gave
her companion very short answers, especially when she disparaged Mr.
Rolfe.
“You couldn't get in a word edgeways,” said Mary Wells.
“I went to hear wisdom, and not to chatter.”
“He doesn't think small beer of hisself, anyhow.”
“How _can_ he, and see other men?”
“Well. I don't think much of him, for my part.”
“I dare say the Queen of Sheba's lady's-maid thought Solomon a silly
thing.”
“I don't know; that was afore my time” (rather pertly).
“Of course it was, or you couldn't imitate her.”
On reaching home she ordered a light dinner upstairs, and sent
directions to the coachman and grooms.
At nine next morning the four-in-hand came round, and they started for
the asylum--coachman and two more in brave liveries; two outriders.
Twenty miles from Huntercombe they changed the wheelers, two fresh
horses having been sent on at night.
They drove in at the lodge-gate of Bellevue House, which was left
ostentatiously open, and soon drew up at the hall door, and set many a
pale face peeping from the upper windows.
The door opened; the respectable servant came out with a respectful
air.
“Is Mr. Salter at home, sir?”
“No, madam. Mr. Coyne is in charge to-day.”
Lady Bassett was glad to hear that, and asked if she might be allowed
to see Mr. Coyne.
“Certainly, madam. I'll tell him at once,” was the reply.
Determined to enter the place, Lady Bassett requested her people to
open the carriage door, and she was in the act of getting out when Mr.
Coyne appeared, a little oily, bustling man, with a good-humored,
vulgar face, liable to a subservient pucker; he wore it directly at
sight of a fine woman, fine clothes, fine footmen, and fine horses.
“Mr. Coyne, I believe,” said Lady Bassett, with a fascinating smile.
“At your service, madam.”
“May I have a word in private with you, sir?”
“Certainly, madam.”
“We have come a long way. May the horses be fed?”
“I am afraid,” said the little man, apologetically, “I must ask you to
send them to the inn. It is close by.”
“By all means.” (To one of the outriders:) “You will wait here for
orders.”
Mary Wells had been already instructed to wait in the hall and look out
sharp for Sir Charles's keeper and nurse, and tell them her ladyship
wanted to speak to them privately, and it would be money in their way.
Lady Bassett, closeted with Mr. Coyne, began first to congratulate
herself. “Mr. Bassett,” said she, “is no friend of mine, but he has
done me a kindness in sending Sir Charles here, when he might have sent
him to some place where he might have been made worse instead of
better. Here, I conclude, gentlemen of your ability will soon cure his
trifling disorder, will you not?”
“I have good hopes, your ladyship; he is better to-day.”
“Now I dare say you could tell me to a month when he will be cured.”
“Oh, your ladyship exaggerates my skill too much.”
“Three months?”
“That is a short time to give us; but your ladyship may rely on it we
will do our best.”
“Will you? Then I have no fear of the result. Oh, by-the-by, Dr. Willis
wanted me to take a message to you, Mr. Coyne. He knows you by
reputation.”
“Indeed! Really I was not aware that my humble--”
“Then you are better known than you in your modesty supposed. Let me
see: what was the message? Oh, it was a peculiarity in Sir Charles he
wished you to know. Dr. Willis has attended him from a boy, and he
wished me to tell you that morphia and other sedatives have some very
bad effects on him. I told Dr. Willis you would probably find that and
every thing else out without a hint from him or any one else.”
“Yes; but I will make a note of it, for all that.”
“That is very kind of you. It will flatter the doctor, the more so as
he has so high an opinion of you. But now, Mr. Coyne, I suppose if I am
very good, and promise to soothe him, and not excite him, I may see my
husband to-day?”
“Certainly, madam. You have an order from the person who--”
“I forgot to bring it with me. I relied on your humanity.”
“That is unfortunate. I am afraid I must not--” He hesitated, looked
very uncomfortable, and said he would consult Mr. Appleton; then,
suddenly puckering his face into obsequiousness, “Would your ladyship
like to inspect some of our arrangements for the comfort of our
patients?”
Lady Bassett would have declined the proposal but for the singular play
of countenance; she was herself all eye and mind, so she said, gravely,
“I shall be very happy, sir.”
Mr. Coyne then led the way, and showed her a large sitting-room, where
some ladies were seated at different occupations and amusements: they
kept more apart from each other than ladies do in general; but this was
the only sign a far more experienced observer than Lady Bassett could
have discovered, the nurses having sprung from authoritative into
unobtrusive positions at the sound of Mr. Coyne's footstep outside.
“What!” said Lady Bassett; “are all these ladies--” She hesitated.
“Every one,” said Mr. Coyne; “and some incurably.”
“Oh, please let us retire; I have no right to gratify my curiosity.
Poor things! they don't seem unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” said Mr. Coyne. “We don't allow unhappiness here; our doctor
is too fond of them; he is always contriving something to please them.”
At this moment Lady Bassett looked up and saw a woman watching her over
the rail of a corridor on the first floor. She recognized the face
directly. The woman made her a rapid signal, and then disappeared into
one of the rooms.
“Would there be any objection to our going upstairs, Mr. Coyne?” said
Lady Bassett, with a calm voice and a heart thumping violently.
“Oh, none whatever. I'll conduct you; but then, I am afraid I must
leave you for a time.”
He showed her upstairs, blew a whistle, handed her over to an
attendant, and bowed and smiled himself away grotesquely.
Jones was the very keeper she had feed last visit. She flushed with joy
at sight of bull-necked, burly Jones. “Oh, Mr. Jones!” said she,
putting her hands together with a look that might have melted a
hangman.
Jones winked, and watched Mr. Coyne out of sight.
“I have seen your ladyship's maid,” said Jones, confidentially. “It is
all right. Mr. Coyne have got the blinkers on. Only pass me your word
not to excite him.”
“Oh no, sir, I will soothe him.” And she trembled all over.
“Sally!” cried Jones.
The nurse came out of a room and held the door ajar; she whispered, “I
have prepared him, madam; he is all right.”
Lady Bassett, by a great effort, kept her feet from rushing, her heart
from crying out with joy, and she entered the room. Sally closed the
door like a shot, with a delicacy one would hardly have given her
credit for, to judge from appearances.
Sir Charles stood in the middle of the room, beaming to receive her,
but restraining himself. They met: he held her to his heart; she wept
for joy and grief upon his neck. Neither spoke for a long time.