“What do you think?” asked Julius.

Mrs. Glenarm was enchanted.  “The very person to go to!” she said.  “If I am not let in I can easily write—­and explain my object as an apology.  Lady Lundie is so right-minded, so sympathetic.  If she sees no one else—­I have only to confide my anxieties to her, and I am sure she will see me.  You will lend me a carriage, won’t you?  I’ll go to Windygates to-morrow.”

Julius took his violin off the pi ano.

“Don’t think me very troublesome,” he said coaxingly.  “Between this and to-morrow we have nothing to do.  And it is such music, if you once get into the swing of it!  Would you mind trying again?”

Mrs. Glenarm was willing to do any thing to prove her gratitude, after the invaluable hint which she had just received.  At the second trial the fair pianist’s eye and hand were in perfect harmony.  The lovely melody which the Adagio of Mozart’s Fifteenth Sonata has given to violin and piano flowed smoothly at last—­and Julius Delamayn soared to the seventh heaven of musical delight.

The next day Mrs. Glenarm and Mrs. Delamayn went together to Windygates House.

TENTH SCENE—­THE BEDROOM.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.

LADY LUNDIE DOES HER DUTY.

THE scene opens on a bedroom—­and discloses, in broad daylight, a lady in bed.

Persons with an irritable sense of propriety, whose self-appointed duty it is to be always crying out, are warned to pause before they cry out on this occasion.  The lady now presented to view being no less a person than Lady Lundie herself, it follows, as a matter of course, that the utmost demands of propriety are, by the mere assertion of that fact, abundantly and indisputably satisfied.  To say that any thing short of direct moral advantage could, by any possibility, accrue to any living creature by the presentation of her ladyship in a horizontal, instead of a perpendicular position, is to assert that Virtue is a question of posture, and that Respectability ceases to assert itself when it ceases to appear in morning or evening dress.  Will any body be bold enough to say that?  Let nobody cry out, then, on the present occasion.

Lady Lundie was in bed.

Her ladyship had received Blanche’s written announcement of the sudden stoppage of the bridal tour; and had penned the answer to Sir Patrick—­the receipt of which at Ham Farm has been already described.  This done, Lady Lundie felt it due to herself to take a becoming position in her own house, pending the possible arrival of Sir Patrick’s reply.  What does a right-minded woman do, when she has reason to believe that she is cruelly distrusted by the members of her own family?  A right-minded woman feels it so acutely that she falls ill.  Lady Lundie fell ill accordingly.

The case being a serious one, a medical practitioner of the highest grade in the profession was required to treat it.  A physician from the neighboring town of Kirkandrew was called in.