With that Jewdwine turned on his pillow, and consoled himself by thinking of Miss Fulcher and her love.

CHAPTER LXXIX

Lucia had been lying still all the afternoon on her couch in the drawing-room; so still that Kitty thought she had been sleeping.  But Kitty was mistaken.

“Kitty, it’s past five, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dear; a quarter past.”

“It’ll be all over by this time to-morrow.  Do you think he’ll be very terrible?”

“No, dear.  I think he’ll be very kind and very gentle.”

“Not if he thinks I’m shamming.”

“He won’t think that.” ("I wish he could,” said Kitty to herself.)

They were waiting for the visit of Sir Wilfrid Spence.  The Harmouth doctor had desired a higher light on the mysterious illness that kept Lucia lying for ever on her back.  It might have been explained, he said, if she had suffered lately some deep mental or moral shock; but Lucia had not confessed to either, and in the absence of any mental cause it would be as well, said the Harmouth doctor, to look for a physical one.  The fear at the back of the Harmouth doctor’s mind was sufficiently revealed by his choice of the specialist, Sir Wilfrid Spence.

“Do you think I’m shamming, Kitty?  Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I’m not quite sure.  You know, if you think about your spine long enough you can imagine that it’s very queer.  But I haven’t been thinking about my spine.  It doesn’t interest me.  Dr. Robson would have told me if he thought I was shamming, because I asked him to.  There’s one thing makes me think it isn’t fancy.  I keep on wanting to do things.  I want—­you don’t know how I want to go to the top of Harcombe Hill.  And my ridiculous legs won’t let me.  And all the while, Kitty, I want to play.  It’s such a long time since I made my pretty music.”

A long time indeed, as Kitty was thinking sadly.  Lucia had not made her pretty music since that night six months ago when she had played to please Keith Rickman.

“Things keep on singing in my head, and I want to play them.  It stands to reason that I would if I could.  But I can’t.  Oh, how I do talk about myself!  Kitty, there must be a fine, a heavy fine, of sixpence, every time I talk about myself.”

“I shouldn’t make much by it,” said Kitty.

Lucia closed her eyes, and Kitty went on with the manuscript she was copying.  After a silence of twenty minutes Lucia opened her eyes again.  They rested longingly on Kitty at her work.

“Kitty,” she said, “Do you know, I sometimes think it would be better to sell those books.  I can’t bear to do it when he gave them to me.  But I do believe I ought to.  The worst of it is I should have to ask him to do it for me.”

“Don’t do anything in a hurry, dear.  Wait and see,” said Kitty cheerfully.

It seemed to Lucia that there was nothing to wait for now.  She wondered why Kitty said that, and whether it meant that they thought her worse than they liked to say and whether that was why Sir Wilfrid Spence was coming?