After that Mrs Dale walked home through the garden by herself.  He had studiously told her that that house in which they lived should be lent, not to her, but to her children, during his lifetime.  He had positively declined the offer of her warmer regard.  He had made her understand that they were to look on each other almost as enemies; but that she, enemy as she was, should still be allowed the use of his munificence, because he chose to do his duty by his nieces!

“It will be better for us that we shall leave it,” she said to herself as she seated herself in her own arm-chair over the drawing-room fire.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Doctor Crofts Is Called In

Mrs Dale had not sat long in her drawing-room before tidings were brought to her which for a while drew her mind away from that question of her removal.  “Mamma,” said Bell, entering the room, “I really do believe that Jane has got scarlatina.”  Jane, the parlour-maid, had been ailing for the last two days, but nothing serious had hitherto been suspected.

Mrs Dale instantly jumped up.  “Who is with her?” she asked.

It appeared from Bell’s answer that both she and Lily had been with the girl, and that Lily was still in the room.  Whereupon Mrs Dale ran upstairs, and there was on the sudden a commotion in the house.  In an hour or so the village doctor was there, and he expressed an opinion that the girl’s ailment was certainly scarlatina.  Mrs Dale, not satisfied with this, sent off a boy to Guestwick for Dr Crofts, having herself maintained an opposition of many years’ standing against the medical reputation of the apothecary, and gave a positive order to the two girls not to visit poor Jane again.  She herself had had scarlatina, and might do as she pleased.  Then, too, a nurse was hired.

All this changed for a few hours the current of Mrs Dale’s thoughts:  but in the evening she went back to the subject of her morning conversation, and before the three ladies went to bed, they held together an open council of war upon the subject.  Dr Crofts had been found to be away from Guestwick, and word had been sent on his behalf that he would be over at Allington early on the following morning.  Mrs Dale had almost made up her mind that the malady of her favourite maid was not scarlatina, but had not on that account relaxed her order as to the absence of her daughters from the maid’s bedside.

“Let us go at once,” said Bell, who was even more opposed to any domination on the part of her uncle than was her mother.  In the discussion which had been taking place between them the whole matter of Bernard’s courtship had come upon the carpet.  Bell had kept her cousin’s offer to herself as long as she had been able to do so; but since her uncle had pressed the subject upon Mrs Dale, it was impossible for Bell to remain silent any longer.  “You do not want me to marry him, mamma; do you?” she had said, when her mother