Black Sheep

Chapter XII

The news that Mr Calverleigh had left Bath was brought to Sydney Place by Miss Butterbank on the following morning. She was a little disappointed to find that Miss Wendover was already aware of it, having received a brief note from him excusing himself from attending her rout-party; but as he had not divulged his reason for leaving Bath, his destination, or the means by which he proposed to travel, she was quickly able to repair two of these omissions. She was known, behind her back, as the Bath Intelligencer, but although she could tell Miss Wendover that Mr Calverleigh had set out on the London Mail Coach, at five o’clock on the previous evening, she had not discovered the nature of his business, and could only advance a few conjectures.

Miss Wendover heard of the departure with relief, and indulged the hope that Mr Calverleigh did not mean to return to Bath. Foolish she might be, but it had not escaped her notice that he and Abby had become wondrous great, which was a circumstance which filled her with misgiving. He was an interesting man, and one who had been, in her opinion, hardly used, but no more ineligible husband for Abby could have been imagined. When the suggestion had first been slyly made to her that Abby was encouraging his advances she had been as incredulous as she was indignant, but when Abby, not content with accompanying him to the theatre, took to driving about the neighbouring countryside with him, she became very uneasy, and disclosed to the faithful Miss Butterbank that she wished neither of the Calverleighs had ever come to Bath.

Their coming had certainly cut up her peace. First, there had been Stacy (poor young man!), whose very understandable attentions to Fanny had brought down James’s wrath upon her head, and even, to some extent, Abby’s; and who had turned out to be sadly unsteady, if James and George were to be believed, though it would not surprise her to find that they had grossly exaggerated Stacy’s failings, for there was something so particularly winning about his graceful manners, and the deference he used towards his elders. He was the head of his family, too, and the owner of a considerable estate in Berkshire. She had never visited Danescourt, but she had looked for it in an old volume entitled Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, and there, sure enough, it was, with an illustration depicting a large, sprawling house of obvious antiquity, and a quantity of interesting information about its history, and that of the Calverleighs, who seemed to have owned it for an impressive number of centuries. If it was true, as George bad told Abby it was, that it was so grossly encumbered that it was in imminent danger of passing out of Calverleigh hands, it could not be regarded as an asset, of course, for its loss must diminish Stacy’s consequence to vanishing point, and transform him from a desirable parti into a scapegrace who had wasted his inheritance, and reduced himself to penury. But how could she have known this, when she had welcomed Stacy to Sydney Place? It was most unjust of James to have sent her such a scold; and for her part she would find it hard to believe that, whatever the poor young man’s misfortunes might be, he had come to Bath in search of a rich wife. As for the shocking suspicion Abby had, that he meant to elope with Fanny, that she never would believe; and she wondered how Abby could suppose dear little Fanny to be so dead to all feelings of shame, or how she herself could be so regardless of her sister’s precarious health as to put such ideas into her head as must give rise to the sort of agitating reflections calculated to throw her nerves into disorder.

And then, as though all this were not bad enough, Mr Miles Calverleigh had descended upon them, and lost no time at all in attaching himself particularly to Abby! There was no doubt about his reputation, for, however much one might pity him for the harsh treatment meted out to him by his father, the fact remained that not the most rigorous father would pack his son off to India without good reason. And if James thought he could lay the blame for this black sheep’s intrusion into Abby’s life ather door he was never more mistaken, and so she would tell him. Who, in the world, could have thought that Abby, rejecting the offer of the noble lord who addressed himself to her surrounded by the aura of dear Papa’s approval, holding up her nose at such admirable suitors as Mr Peter Dunston, would succumb to the advances of a man who had nothing whatsoever to recommend him to one so notoriously picksome as she was? He was not at all handsome; he had none of his nephew’s address; his manners were the reverse of graceful; and his raiment, so far from being elegant, showed neither neatness nor propriety. Not only did he pay morning-visits in riding-breeches and indifferently polished top-boots, but, more often than not he looked as though he had dressed all by guess, tying his neckcloth in a careless knot, and shrugging himself into his coat. Anyone would have supposed that Abby, herself always precise to a pin, would have held such a shabrag in disgust-even if he had been unrelated to the Calverleigh she held in positive abhorrence! She had always been capricious, but to allow the uncle to make up to her while she refused to countenance the nephew’s courtship of her niece carried caprice into the realm of distempered freakishness. And one had thought that she had outgrown what dear Rowland had called the odd kick in her gallop!

Abby, well aware that Selina was watching her with misgiving, betrayed none of her own misgivings. Away from Miles Calverleigh’s disturbing presence, she could be mistress of her self; and she pursued her usual avocations without a sign that her cheerful calm concealed a heart and a mind suffering from a serious disorder. Mr Calverleigh’s shortcomings were as obvious to her as to Selina, and as little as Selina did she know why, after so many fancy-free years, she should have fallen in love with one so hopelessly ineligible and so totally unlike any of the gentlemenwith whom she had enjoyed passing flirtations. She had been attracted by his smile, but no smile, however fascinating it might be, could cause a cool-headed female of more than eight-and-twenty so wholly to lose her poise and her judgment that she felt she had met in its owner, the embodiment of an ideal.

Fumbling for an explanation, she thought that it was not Miles Calverleigh’s smile which had awakened an instant response in her, but the understanding behind the smile. She had been conscious almost from the start of their acquaintance, of an intangible link between them, as though he had been her counter-part and nothing he had said, no disclosure of cynical unconcern or total disregard of morals, had weakened the link. He could infuriate her, he frequently shocked her, but still she felt herself akin to him.

She had told him that she was not sure .that she loved him, but she had done so not in doubt of her love for him, but in dismay at the realization that she did love him, whatever he was, or whatever he had done. If she had been a besotted schoolgirl, like her niece, she would have melted into his embrace, and have thought the world well lost. But at eight-and-twenty one did not, on an impulse, cast aside all the canons of one’s upbringing; and still less did one lightly ignore the duty owed to one’s family. Miles Calverleigh did not recognize family claims, and what shocked her most in this was the discovery that she was not shocked, but had experienced instead a pang of envy.

She wondered whether it was the rebellious streak in her, so frequently deplored even by her mother, which had drawn her irresistibly to Miles Calverleigh; but when she considered this, as dispassionately as she could, she thought that it could hardly be so. It might lead her to throw her cap over the windmill, but it found no answering chord in Miles. He was not a rebel. Rebels fought against the trammels of convention, and burned to rectify what they saw to be evil in the shibboleths of an elder generation, but Miles Calverleigh was not of their number. No wish to reform the world inspired him, not the smallest desire to convert others to his own way of thinking. He accepted, out of a vast and perhaps idle tolerance, the rules laid down by a civilized society, and, when he transgressed these, accepted also, and with unshaken good-humour, society’s revenge on him.

Neither the zeal of a reformer, nor the rancour of one bitterly punished for the sins of his youth, awoke a spark of resentment in his breast. He did not defy convention: when it did not interfere with whatever line of conduct he meant to pursue he conformed to it; and when it did he ignored it, affably conceding to his critics their right to censure him, if they felt so inclined, and caring neither for their praise nor their blame.

Such a character should have been alien to a Wendover. Abby knew it, and tried to convince herself that she was suffering from much the same adolescent madness which had attacked her niece, and from which she would soon recover. She met with no success: she was not an adolescent, but she could remember the throes of her first, frustrated love-affair, and she knew that her present condition was quite unlike the joys and agonies experienced ten years earlier. Like Fanny, she had fallen in love with a handsome countenance, and had endowed its owner with every imaginable virtue. Looking back in amusement upon this episode she thought how fortunate it was for the undesirable suitor that her father had sent him packing before he had had time to tumble off the pedestal she had built for him. But she had built no pedestal for Miles Calverleigh: the very thought of setting him upon one appealed irresistibly to her lively sense of humour, and made it necessary for her to explain to Selina that her sudden laugh breaking a long silence, had been caused by the recollection of an old joke, too foolish to be repeated. The discovery that her first suitor had feet of clay would have shattered her infatuation; she had known from the beginning that Miles Calverleigh was no paladin, but his sins were of as little importance to her as his sallow, harsh-featured face. If she married him, it would be with her eyes open to his faults, and in the knowledge that, in consulting only her own ardent desire, she would be subjecting every member of her family to varying degrees of shock, dismay, and even, where Selina and Mary were concerned, to grave distress.

It was a hard problem to solve, and none of the arguments that clashed endlessly in her brain brought her any nearer to a decision, though they nagged at her all day, and kept her awake long into the night.

But no one, watching her as she moved amongst her guests on Thursday evening, would have suspected that anything had occurred to ruffle her serenity; and not the keenest eyes could detect in her face any sign that she was labouring under the pangs of love. So much in command of herself was she that she was even able, when Lady Weaverham enquired archly when they might expect to see Mr Miles Calverleigh in Bath again, to reply smilingly: “I don’t know, ma’am. We miss him, don’t we? My sister thinks him much too free and easy, but for my part I find him most entertaining. One never knows what he will say next!”

“Which, to my mind,” Lady Weaverham told Mrs Ancrum, “isn’t the way a young woman talks about a gentleman she’s nutty upon! And never a blush, or a conscious look either! Well, I did think it was a case between them, but I daresay it wouldn’t have done, so it’s as well that it ain’t.”

Though nobody suspected that there was anything amiss with Abby, several people noticed that Fanny was not in her best looks. She was a little flushed, and decidedly heavy-eyed, but when Mrs Grayshott asked her kindly if she was feeling quite well she assured her that indeed she was, except for a slight headache. “Don’t say anything to Abby about it, ma’am!” she begged. “It would spoil the party for her if she knew, and I promise you it is very slight!” She added, before flitting away to greet some fresh arrivals: “You know how it is, when one holds a large party! However carefully you may plan it, there seem always to be such a number of things to do at the last moment that you can’t help but be rather tired by the time the party begins!”

It was true that she had been busy for most of the day, but neither fatigue nor a slight headache would, under normal circumstances, have much impaired her enjoyment of the party. But she too was faced with a difficult problem; and although she had made up her mind that if the choice lay between eloping with Stacy to Scotland and losing him for ever, Scotland it must be, the decision had not put an end to her heart-searchings, and it had certainly not raised her spirits. When Selina chatted happily of winter plans, and discussed the numerous dresses she must have for her come-out in the spring, she felt an absurd desire to burst into tears; yet when she tried to imagine what it would be like to bid Stacy goodbye, her impulse was to fly to him immediately, just to assure him that she meant to keep her promise. The trouble was that she had been granted no opportunity since their stolen meeting in the Abbey to exchange more than a few words with him, and those only in public. It was no wonder that she should be feeling low. Once she was with him, and no longer lived in dread of being separated from him, everything would be right: it was only the actual severing of the ties which bound her to Sydney Place which made her feel wretched, and she must naturally be sad at wrenching herself from her home. After all, she had been miserable for days before she had gone, once, to spend a month with her Uncle James and her Aunt Cornelia. She had been extremely homesick, too, but she had recovered from this in a week. And if she could do so when staying with her uncle, who was so precise and prosy, and her aunt, who was detestable, how much more rapidly would she recover when she was in the arms of a husband whom she adored!

Her heart leaped up when she saw Stacy bowing over Selina’s hand. How handsome he was! how elegant! how easy and polished were his manners, and how gracefully he made his bow! He made every other man in the room look dowdy and clumsy. He was top-of-the-trees—the Real Thing—and from amongst all the fashionable beauties who must surely have cast out lures to him he had chosen her—little Fanny Wendover, who hadn’t even made her come-out! She felt a rush of pride in him, and wondered how she could have hesitated for a moment to go away with him.

Yet when, presently, he made his way to her side, and tried to draw her apart, she would not allow it, saying in an urgent undervoice: “No, no, not here! not now!”

“But my darling—!” he expostulated caressingly.

She was terribly nervous, fancying that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on her; a stab of pain shot through her head; and suddenly she was shaken by a wave of irritation, and whispered quite fiercely: “Don’t!”

He looked to be a good deal taken-aback. “But, Fanny, I must talk to you!”

“Not now!” she repeated. “I can’t—All these people—! Oh, pray don’t tease me! I have such a headache!”

The smile faded from his lips. He said: “I see what it is: your courage has failed you, or your love is not as strong as I believed.”

“No, no, I promise it isn’t so! Only we cannot talk here! Surely you must perceive the danger?”

“Then where?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” She saw the frown gathering on his brow, and said hurriedly: “Tomorrow—in the Gardens! At—at two o’clock! Aunt Selina will be resting on her bed, and Abby always visits old Mrs Nibley on Fridays. I’ll contrive to join you there without Grimston’s knowing. No more now: Abby is looking at us!”

She turned away on the words. The stabs of pain in her head were increasing, making her feel sick, and almost blinding her. A couple of uncertain steps brought her into collision with someone. She stammered: “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see!”

Her hand was caught, and held in a sustaining grasp; Oliver Grayshott’s voice sounded above her head. “Fanny, what it is? You are ill!”

“Oh, it’s you!” she said, clinging gratefully to his hand. “I’m not ill. It is only that my head aches so dreadfully! I shall be better directly.”

“Yes, but not in this squeeze,” he said. “You must go to bed at once!”

“Oh, no, how can I? It would break up the party, and create a horrid fuss!”

“No, it won’t,” he said calmly. “No one will notice it, if you slip out of the room. I think you have a migraine,and I know, because I’ve had ‘em myself, that there’s only one thing for it, and that’s to he down on your bed. Shall I fetch Lavinia to go with you?”

“No, pray don’t! It isn’t as bad as that! Nurse will know what to do for me. Only don’t say anything to frighten my aunts!”

“Of course not,” he replied.

“Thank you,” she sighed. “I’m very much obliged to you!”

He watched her go unobtrusively out of the room, and then made his way to where his mother was seated, talking to Canon Pinfold. He soon found an opportunity to tell her that Fanny had retired with a headache, and was anxious that her aunts should not be alarmed. She said reassuringly that she would convey the news to Abby, who would be neither alarmed nor even surprised. “ She told me, when I said I thought Fanny not looking quite the thing, that she was pretty sure she had the headache only the silly child wouldn’t own to it.”

In point of fact, Abby had observed Fanny’s departure. She said: “Yes, I saw her go, and I was excessively grateful to Oliver for persuading her to do so. What a kind young man he is! I shall take a peep at her when I go upstairs to bed, but I need never be in a worry about her when Grimston has her in charge! I expect she will be quite restored by tomorrow.”

She was mistaken. While she was still sipping a cup of chocolate on the following morning, she received a visit from Mrs Grimston, who came to request her, ominously, to take a look at Miss Fanny as soon as might be convenient.

“It’s no more than I expected, miss,” said Mrs Grimston, with the peculiar satisfaction of the devoted retainer who has detected incipient illness in one of her nurslings. “‘Yes,’ I said to myself, when she came up to me last night, ‘there’s more to this than a headache. If I know anything about it,’ I said, ‘what you’ve got, poor lamb, is the influenza!’ Which she has, Miss Abby.” She took the empty cup from Abby, and added: “ And, if I was you, ma’am, I would send the footboy to fetch the doctor to her, because she’s in a high fever, and there’s no saying but what she may throw out a rash presently, though the measles it can’t be!”

“No, of course it can’t!” said Abby, throwing back the bedclothes. “I don’t doubt it’s nothing more than influenza, just as you say!”

“Is it’s not the scarlet fever,” said Mrs Grimston, depressing optimism. She held up Abby’s dressing-gown for her. “For I shouldn’t be doing my duty, Miss Abby, if I didn’t tell you that she’s been complaining for the past hour and more that she has a sore throat!

“Very likely,” Abby returned. “So did I, when I was laid up for a sennight with the influenza, last year!”

Balked of her wish to allay anxiety by her superior knowledge and commonsense, Mrs Grimston threw in a doubler. “Yes, Miss Abby, and if it is the influenza, it’s to be hoped Miss Selina hasn’t taken it from her!”

“Oh, Grimston, you—you wretch!” Abby exclaimed ruefully. “If she has, we shall be in the suds! Well! all my dependence is upon you!”

Mollified by this tribute, Mrs Grimston relented, and said, as she accompanied Abby to the sickroom: “And so I should hope, ma’am! They say that there’s a lot of this influenza going about, so I daresay Miss Fanny hasn’t taken anything worse. But you know what she is, Miss Abby, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll send for the doctor!”

Abby did indeed know what Miss Fanny was, and she gave a ready consent to the footboy’s being sent off immediately on this errand. Fanny, though rarely ill, was a bad patient. If any seasonal ailment, or epidemic disease, attacked her, it invariably did so with unprecedented violence. None of her school-friends had been as full of the measles as she had been; none had whooped more distressingly; or had been more tormented by the mumps; so it came as no surprise to Abby, upon entering a room redolent with the fumes of burning pastilles, to find her in a high fever, and complaining in a miserable wail that she was hot, uncomfortable, aching in every limb, and hardly able to lift her eyelids.

“Poor Fanny!” Abby said softly, lifting the folded handkerchief from her brow, and soaking it afresh with vinegar. “There! is that better? Don’t cry, my pet! Dr Rowton is coming to see you, and he will soon make you more comfortable.”

“I don’t want him! I’m not ill! I’m not, I’m not! I want toget up! I must get up!”

“To be sure, and so you shall, just as soon as you feel more the thing,” Abby said soothingly.

“I do feel the thing! It’s only that my head hurts me and I can’t hold my eyes open, and everything aches all over me!” wept the sufferer. “Oh, Abby, please make me better quickly!”

“Yes, darling, of course I will.”

This assurance seemed to calm Fanny. She lay still for awhile, dropping into an uneasy doze; but within a very few minutes she became restless again, insisting that she was better, trying to get up, and bursting into tears when Abby gently pressed her back on to her pillows.

Having had considerable experience of her mercurial temperament, and knowing that whenever she was condemned to lie in bed it took much to persuade her that her ills would not be instantly alleviated by her getting up, and going for a walk, Abby set no particular store by her agitation. Leaving Mrs Grimston to sit with her, she withdrew, to dress, and—when fortified by breakfast—to break the news to Selina.

She found that Fardle, Selina’s maid, had been before her, carrying such an unpromising account of Fanny’s condition that Selina’s appetite had been destroyed. When Abby came into her room, she was sitting up in bed, eating pieces of toast dipped in weak tea: a melancholy diet to which it was her custom to resort in times of stress. She greeted her sister with a moan, and a demand to be told whether the doctor had been sent for.

“Yes, dear, an hour ago! I daresay he will be here directly,” replied Abby cheerfully. “Not that I think there is much to be done for her, but I hope he may be able to make her more comfortable at least. Grimston gave her a fever powder at seven o’clock. but it hasn’t answered, so I have told her not to repeat it.”

“No no, don’t let Grimston quack her! Oh, Abby, if she should be beginning in the smallpox—!” uttered Selina, staring fearfully at her.

“Beginning in the smallpox?” echoed Abby, in astonishment.

“Good God, no! How can you be so absurd, Selina? Why, surely you haven’t forgotten that Dr Rowton persuaded us all to be inoculated last year? Besides, where could she have contracted it? There are no cases of it in Bath that I’ve heard of!”

“No, dear, very likely not, but one never knows, and Fardle has been telling me—”

“Fardle!” exclaimed Abby. “I might have guessed as much! I am perfectly sure that she has a sister, or an aunt, or a cousin, who nearly died in the smallpox, and that her symptoms precisely resembled Fanny’s, for we’ve never yet had an illness in this household, but what one of Fardle’s relations had had it too, only far worse! Pray don’t fly into a fuss, dear! I shall own myself surprised if Dr Rowton finds Fanny to be suffering from anything more serious than influenza.”

“Oh, my love, why didn’t you send for Dr Dent? I have no great opinion of Rowton, though an excellent man in his way, of course, but not clever! You know how well Dr Dent understood my case when I had influenza!”

“Yes, dear, but I was persuaded you would wish me to send for Rowton, because he is familiar with her constitution,” said Abby diplomatically. “Do you mean to drive into town this morning? Will you buy a bottle of lavender-water, if you please?”

“Fardle must procure it,” said Selina, in a failing voice. “I shall rest quietly in bed this morning, for I have already felt a spasm, and heaven forbid I should be ill at this moment! Such a dreadful shock to be roused with such news! Yes, and she must bring me some camphor, for I don’t believe there is any in the house, and you know how susceptible I am to colds and influenza!”

Abby agreed to this, but ventured to suggest that not the most susceptible person would be very likely to contract influenza, twice within the space of a month.

“No, dearest,” replied Selina, directing a look of patient reproach at her. “I daresay an ordinary person might not, but alas, I have never enjoyed high health, and as for not contracting influenza twice in a month, I had three epidemic colds last winter one after another! And I recall that you said exactly the same when you came home from Lady Trevisian’s card-party, sneezing and snuffling, and I begged you not to come near me, but to go up to your bed immediately! You said I could not catch it from you, because I had not been out of my bed above a sennight! But I did!”

Abby begged pardon, kissed her cheek, and left her to the enjoyment of her mild triumph.

In the sickroom, she found Fanny tossing restlessly, and alternately expressing her determination to get up, and complaining of the various aches and pains which assailed her. Her pulse was rapid, and her skin very hot and dry, and it was obvious that her fever was mounting.

Mrs Grimston, drawing Abby out of the room, said that if anyone were to ask her she would feel herself impelled to say that they were regularly in for it. “As nasty an attack as any I’ve nursed her through!” she said. “Well, I’m sure it’s not to be wondered at, the way she’s been gallivanting to parties all over, and her no more than a baby! Burnt to the socket, that’s what she is, Miss Abby, and so full of crotchets and nonsense as is enough to put one quite out of patience! First she must get up, and the moment my back’s turned so she did! Only that turned her so dizzy she was glad enough to be put back into bed. Then she began to cry, but I soon put a stop to that, ma’am, for we don’t want her to get into one of her ways, for, as I told her, that won’t make her fed better! Then nothing will do for her but what she must speak to Betty about mending a frill on her blue muslin. ‘There’ll be time enough for that, Miss Fanny,’ I said, ‘and no need to bring Betty into the room to take the influenza, for I’ll speak to her about itmyself.’”

The arrival of Dr Rowton brought this monologue to a close. He was a sensible-looking man, with a latent twinkle in his eye, but it was not difficult to see why Selina thought poorly of him. He had a cheerful, matter-of-fact manners, and had been known to tell ladies in failing health that their mysterious ailments arose from want of occupation, or from thinking too much about themselves. He said, as he shook hands with Abby: “And how is Miss Wendover? I hear she has my old friend, Dent, attending her now. I thought it wouldn’t be long before she gave poor Ockley the go-by: not her style at all!”

He did not take a very serious view of Fanny’s case; but when he left her he told Abby that she would probably be laid up for some little time. “Oh, yes, it’s influenza right enough,” he said. “It’s running very much about, you know, and unusually virulent. A pity Fanny should have caught it. Now, had it been you, Miss Abby, I should have said you’d be as bobbish as ever in a week, but we both know what Fanny is, don’t we? Always the way with girls of her cut! You’ll have to keep her quiet—as quiet as you can! I was used to call her Miss Quicksilver, when she was a child, and she hasn’t altered much. I’ll send my man round with some medicine for her to take, and we’ll see how she goes on tomorrow.”

He was a favourite of Fanny’s, ranking amongst her oldest friends, and Abby had hoped that his visit would do her good. She did indeed manage to conjure up a wan smile, when he walked up to the bedside, saying: “Well, Miss Quicksilver, and pray what’s all this?” but the voice in which she responded: “Oh, dear Dr ‘Wowton’, make me well again quickly!” was very lachrymose; and when he told her, in his blunt way, that she would certainly not be able to get up that day, or for several days, she burst into tears.

When Abby returned to the sickroom, however, she seemed to be resigned to her fate, and to be inclined to sleep.

She did drop off into an uneasy doze from time to time, but her dreams were haunted by Stacy, either waiting for hour upon hour in Sydney Gardens, or accusing her of being false to him; and more than once she woke with tears on her cheeks, and a jumble of words on her feverish lips.

She retained no very clear memory of what had happened at the previous night’s party, but she did remember that she hadpromised to meet Stacy, and that he had been angry with her for not talking to him. He had said that he could see she didn’t love him, and now he would be sure of it. She had racked her brains to hit upon some way of conveying a message to him, but Abby and Nurse were in league against her; they would not even let her see Betty Conner, who could have done it for her. Perhaps he would think that she had stayed away on purpose, to show him that she didn’t want to run off with him after all. Perhaps he would leave Bath, as he had threatened to do, and she would never see him again, never be able to tell him that it hadn’t been her fault, or that she did love him, and wasn’t afraid to elope with him to Scotland.

These agitating reflections did nothing to improve her condition; and as her fever mounted they became even more lurid, until they included visions of her own death-bed, and Stacy’s remorse at having so misjudged her. But towards evening Dr Rowton’s paregoric medicine began to take effect, and she grew calmer, emerging from the state of semi-delirium which had kept Abby hovering on the verge of sending a second, and far more urgent, summons to the doctor. She felt so ill, and so much exhausted, that she no longer wanted to get up, or even to exert herself sufficiently to try once more to think how she might send a message to Stacy. It must be too late by now, she thought apathetically. Her whole life was ruined, but it didn’t seem to matter nearly as much as her aching body, and the stabbing pain in her temple, and her terrible thirstiness. When Abby raised her, she leaned her head gratefully on Abby’s shoulder, murmuring her name.

“Yes, my darling, I’m here,” Abby said tenderly. “Nurse is going to shake your pillows while you have a cool drink of lemonade. There, is that better?”

“Oh, yes!” she sighed, her thirst for the moment assuaged. She opened her eyes, and they fell on a big bowl of flowers, “Oh!” she breathed.

“Looking at your beautiful flowers?” Abby said, laying her gently down again. “Oliver and Lavinia brought them, when they came to enquire how you did. They left their love to you, and were so sorry to hear that you’re so poorly. Go to sleep again now, darling: I won’t leave you.”

The spark of hope that had flickered in Fanny’s breast died, but as she lay dreamily looking at the flowers it occurred to her that if the Grayshotts knew that she was ill they would be very likely to tell other people, and so, perhaps, the news would reach Stacy’s ears, and he would know why she had broken her word to him. With a deep sigh of relief, she turned her head on the pillow, snuggling her cheek into it, and drifted back into sleep.