Part 33 (1/2)
Ignoring the doctor's little outbreak of humor, she waited in grave surprise, until it was his pleasure to explain himself.
Doctor Allday, on his side, ignored the ominous change in Emily; he went on as pleasantly as ever. ”Mr. Morris and I have had a long talk about you, my dear. Mr. Morris is a capital fellow; I recommend him as a sweetheart. I also back him in the matter of Mrs. Rook.--What's the matter now? You're as red as a rose. Temper again, eh?”
”Hatred of meanness!” Emily answered indignantly. ”I despise a man who plots, behind my back, to get another man to help him. Oh, how I have been mistaken in Alban Morris!”
”Oh, how little you know of the best friend you have!” cried the doctor, imitating her. ”Girls are all alike; the only man they can understand, is the man who flatters them. _Will_ you oblige me by writing to Mrs.
Rook?”
Emily made an attempt to match the doctor, with his own weapons. ”Your little joke comes too late,” she said satirically. ”There is Mrs. Rook's answer. Read it, and--” she checked herself, even in her anger she was incapable of speaking ungenerously to the old man who had so warmly befriended her. ”I won't say to _you_,” she resumed, ”what I might have said to another person.”
”Shall I say it for you?” asked the incorrigible doctor. ”'Read it, and be ashamed of yourself'--That was what you had in your mind, isn't it?
Anything to please you, my dear.” He put on his spectacles, read the letter, and handed it back to Emily with an impenetrable countenance.
”What do you think of my new spectacles?” he asked, as he took the gla.s.ses off his nose. ”In the experience of thirty years, I have had three grateful patients.” He put the spectacles back in the case. ”This comes from the third. Very gratifying--very gratifying.”
Emily's sense of humor was not the uppermost sense in her at that moment. She pointed with a peremptory forefinger to Mrs. Rook's letter.
”Have you nothing to say about this?”
The doctor had so little to say about it that he was able to express himself in one word:
”Humbug!”
He took his hat--nodded kindly to Emily--and hurried away to feverish pulses waiting to be felt, and to furred tongues that were ashamed to show themselves.
CHAPTER x.x.xI. MOIRA.
When Alban presented himself the next morning, the hours of the night had exercised their tranquilizing influence over Emily. She remembered sorrowfully how Doctor Allday had disturbed her belief in the man who loved her; no feeling of irritation remained. Alban noticed that her manner was unusually subdued; she received him with her customary grace, but not with her customary smile.
”Are you not well?” he asked.
”I am a little out of spirits,” she replied. ”A disappointment--that is all.”
He waited a moment, apparently in the expectation that she might tell him what the disappointment was. She remained silent, and she looked away from him. Was he in any way answerable for the depression of spirits to which she alluded? The doubt occurred to him--but he said nothing.
”I suppose you have received my letter?” she resumed.
”I have come here to thank you for your letter.”
”It was my duty to tell you of Sir Jervis's illness; I deserve no thanks.”
”You have written to me so kindly,” Alban reminded her; ”you have referred to our difference of opinion, the last time I was here, so gently and so forgivingly--”
”If I had written a little later,” she interposed, ”the tone of my letter might have been less agreeable to you. I happened to send it to the post, before I received a visit from a friend of yours--a friend who had something to say to me after consulting with you.”
”Do you mean Doctor Allday?”
”Yes.”
”What did he say?”