And then I opened my eyes, and they saw I was awake.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE NEW HOME

I had frightened them all by my fainting-fit, but after all it was nothing.  The doctor who had been fetched hastily by my frightened lover reassured them.

“Did you think she was sickening for the small-pox?” he asked, looking from one face to the other with bright intelligence.  He was a young doctor not long settled in our neighbourhood, and we used to say among ourselves that he was too clever to stay long with us.  “Well, then, she isn’t doing anything of the sort.  I expect she’s been taking the troubles too much to heart.  A bit run down and nervous.  The honeymoon journey will be the best prescription for that.  I should like to see more flesh on her bones.”

He patted my hand as he spoke; and I could see the relief in the faces about me.  In those days any feverish attack suggested the small-pox.

“Dr. Molyneux should see grandpapa,” I said.  “Grandpapa is not well.”

“You’ve seen it, Bawn?” my grandmother said.  “I thought no one saw it but myself.  But it is no use.  He refuses to see a doctor.  He says he will be all right in a few days.”

I knew she had pulled herself up on the point of saying, “after your wedding.”

Dr. Molyneux smiled humorously.

“Sure, the world’s divided into two classes,” he said—­“the people who are always wanting to see the doctor, and the people who won’t see him at all.  Supposing I were to pay my respects to Lord St. Leger—­it would be hardly polite to go away without doing it.”

“You might be able to judge, perhaps——­” began my grandmother.

“Or I might be able to get over his prejudices, Lady St. Leger.  He isn’t the first that wouldn’t see me; and some of them couldn’t see enough of me at the end,” he said, getting up with that cheery confidence in his face and manner that must have put many a sick man on the road to recovery.

When my grandfather came into the drawing-room before dinner he came and kissed me, and said, “Poor little Bawn!” with an almost excessive tenderness.  Afterwards he mentioned that Dr. Molyneux had said that they were not to be anxious about me.

“I didn’t think one of the tribe could be so pleasant,” he went on.  “He is greatly interested in my swords, and knows as much of the history of weapons as I do and more, for he told me where some of them came from about which I was uncertain.”

My grandmother told me afterwards with awe that Dr. Molyneux had talked about everything but health, and had had all grandpapa’s collection of weapons down from the walls and out of their cases, and had not seemed to look at grandpapa except in the most casual way; but afterwards had startled her by asking, “What’s on his mind, Lady St. Leger, when he isn’t talking of the swords?  Till that is removed I can do little for his body.”  I saw it was a ray of light to her through the troubles that my grandfather had taken kindly to the doctor, and I was very glad.