Nora made a show of protest.  Secretly she was rather glad to give in.  She had not reckoned with the weakness following two unaccustomed days in bed.  Dr. Evans was a kindly elderly man, whose one affectation was the gruffness which the country doctor of the old school so often assumes as if he wished to emphasize his disapproval of the modern suave manner of his city confrere.  He had a sardonic humor and a sharp tongue which had at first quite terrified Nora, until she discovered that they were meant to hide the most generous heart in the world.  Many were the kindly acts he performed in secret for the very people he was most accustomed to abuse.

Having felt Nora’s pulse and looked at her sharply with his keen gray eyes, he settled the question of her attendance at Miss Wickham’s funeral with his accustomed finality.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he growled.  “You may get up after a while and go and sit in the garden a bit; the air is fairly spring-like.  But this afternoon you must lie down again for an hour or two.  I suppose you’ll have to get up to do the civil for James Wickham and his wife before they go back to town.  Oh, no! they’ll not stay the night.  They’ll rush back as fast as the train will take them, once they’ve heard the will read.  Couldn’t bear the associations with the place, now that their dear aunt has departed!” He gave one of his sardonic chuckles.

“It may be nonsense”—­this in reply to Nora’s remonstrance—­“but I’m not going to have you on my hands next.  You’ll go to that funeral and get hysterical like all women, and begin to think that you wish her back.  I should think this last year would have been about all anyone would want.  But you’re a poor sentimental creature, after all,” he jeered.

“I’m nothing of the sort.  But I did feel sorry for her, badly as she often treated me.  She was a desperately lonely old soul.  Nobody cared a bit about her, really, and she knew it.”

“In spite of all her little amiable tricks to make people love her,” said the doctor.  “Now, remember, the garden for an hour this morning, the drawing-room later in the day, after you’ve rested for an hour or so.  And don’t dare disobey me.”  With that, he left.

It was pleasant in the garden.  The air, though chilly, held the promise of spring.  Warmly wrapped in an old cape, which the thoughtful Kate had discovered somewhere, with a book on Paris and some Italian sketches to fall back upon when her own thoughts ceased to divert her, Nora sat in a sheltered corner and looked out on the border which would soon be gay with the tulips whose green stocks were just beginning to push themselves up through the brown earth.  Poor Miss Wickham!  She had been so proud of her garden always.  But for her it had bloomed for the last time.  Would the James Wickhams take as much pride in it?  Somehow, she fancied not.  And she?  Where would she be a year from now?  A year!  Where would she be in another month?