He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham’s letters.

‘Oh!’ said Rosamund, ’what if I shed the “screaming eyedrops,” as you call them?  They will not hurt me, but relieve.  I was sure I should someday envy that girl!  If he dies she will have nursed him and had the last of him.’

‘He’s not going to die!’ said Everard powerfully.

’We must be prepared.  These letters will do that for me.  I have written out the hours of your trains.  Stanton will attend on you.  I have directed him to telegraph to the Dolphin in Bevisham for rooms for the night:  that is to-morrow night.  To-night you sleep at your hotel in London, which will be ready to receive you, and is more comfortable than the empty house.  Stanton takes wine, madeira and claret, and other small necessaries.  If Nevil should be very unwell, you will not leave him immediately.  I shall look to the supplies.  You will telegraph to me twice a day, and write once.  We lunch at half-past twelve, so that you may hit the twenty-minutes-to-two o’clock train.  And now I go to see that the packing is done.’

She carried off her letters to her bedroom, where she fell upon the bed, shutting her eyelids hard before she could suffer her eyes to be the intermediaries of that fever-chamber in Bevisham and her bursting heart.  But she had not positively deceived her husband in the reassurance she had given him by her collectedness and by the precise directions she had issued for his comforts, indicating a mind so much more at ease.  She was firmer to meet the peril of her beloved:  and being indeed, when thrown on her internal resources, one among the brave women of earth, though also one who required a lift from circumstances to take her stand calmly fronting a menace to her heart, she saw the evidence of her influence with Lord Romfrey:  the level she could feel that they were on together so long as she was courageous, inspirited her sovereignly.

He departed at the hour settled for him.  Rosamund sat at her boudoir window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway station.  Neither of them had touched on the necessity of his presenting himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel’s house.  That, and the disgust belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, after he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do:  and his wife admired and respected him for so supreme a loftiness.  And fervently she prayed that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes.  Never had she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she saw the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a wet sky brightened from the West, and on out of sight.

CHAPTER L

AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON