Part 91 (2/2)
”From your husband. I told him I was coming in this direction, and he suggested that I should come over and look you up.” Very casually he made reply, and he could not have been aware of the flood of colour his words sent to her face, for he continued in the same cool fas.h.i.+on as he strolled by her side. ”I was afraid you might consider it an unpardonable liberty, but he a.s.sured me you wouldn't. So--” the green eyes smiled upon her imperturbably--”as I am naturally interested in your welfare, I took my courage in both hands and, at the risk of being considered unprofessional,--I came.”
It was unexpected, but it was disarming. Avery found herself smiling in answer.
”I am very pleased to see you,” she said. ”But your coming just at this time is rather amazing all the same, for I was thinking of you, wis.h.i.+ng I could see you, only a few minutes ago.”
”What can I do for you?” said Maxwell Wyndham.
She hesitated a little before the direct question; then as simply as he had asked she answered, laying the matter before him without reservation.
He listened in his shrewd, comprehending way, asking one or two questions, but making no comments.
”There need be no difficulty about it,” he said, when she ended. ”You say the child is tractable. Keep her in bed to-morrow, and say a medical friend of yours is coming over to see if he can do anything for her cough! Then if you'll ask me to lunch--I'll do the rest.”
He smiled as he ended, and thrust out his hand.
”I'll be going now. I left my bicycle in the village and hope to find it still there. Now remember, Lady Evesham, my visit to-morrow is to be of a strictly unprofessional character. You didn't send for me, so I shall a.s.sume the privilege of coming as a friend. Is that understood?”
He spoke with smiling a.s.surance, and seeing that he meant to gain his point she yielded it.
Not till he was gone did she come to ponder the errand that had brought him thither.
She went back to Jeanie, and found her with aching eyes fixed resolutely on her book. Yes, she was a little tired, but she would rather go on, thank you. Oh no, she did not mind staying in bed to-morrow to please Avery, and she was sure she would like Avery's doctor though she didn't expect he would manage to stop the cough. She would have to do her task though all the same; dear Avery mustn't mind. You see, she had promised.
But she would certainly stay in bed if Avery wished.
And then came the tired sigh, and then that racking, cruel cough that seemed to rend her whole frame. No, she would not finish for another hour yet. Really she must go on.
The brown head dropped on to the little bony hands, and Jeanie was immersed once more in her task.
More than once in the night Avery awoke to hear that tearing, breathless cough in the room next to hers. It was no new thing, but in view of the coming ordeal it filled her with misgiving.
When she rose herself in the morning she felt weighed down with anxious foreboding.
Yet, when Maxwell Wyndham arrived in his sauntering, informal fas.h.i.+on at about noon, she was able to meet him with courage. There was something electric about his personality that seemed almost unconsciously to impart strength to the downhearted. He had drawn her back from the very Door of Death, and her confidence in him was absolute.
They lunched alone together, and talked of many things. More than once, wholly incidentally, he mentioned her husband. She gathered that he did not know of their bitter estrangement. He talked of the polo-craze, with which it seemed Piers was badly bitten, and commented on his splendid horsemans.h.i.+p.
”Yes, he is a wonderful athlete,” Avery said.
She wondered if he deemed her unresponsive, but decided that he set her coldness down to anxiety; for he finished his luncheon without lingering and declared himself ready for the business in hand.
He became in fact strictly business-like from that moment, and throughout the examination that followed she had not the faintest notion as to what was pa.s.sing in his mind. To Jeanie he was curtly kind, but to herself he was as utterly uncommunicative as if he had been a total stranger.
The examination was a protracted one, and more painful than Avery had thought possible. It taxed poor Jeanie's powers of endurance to the uttermost, and long before it was finished she was weeping from sheer exhaustion. He was absolutely patient with her, but he insisted upon carrying the matter through, remaining when it was at last over until she had somewhat recovered from the ordeal.
To Avery the suspense was well-nigh unbearable; but she dared not show the impatience that consumed her. She had a feeling that in some fas.h.i.+on the great doctor was depending upon her self-control, her strength of mind; and she was determined that he should not find her wanting.
Yet, when she at length preceded him downstairs and into the little sitting-room she wondered if the hammering of her heart reached him, so tremendous were its strokes. They seemed to her to be beating out a death-knell in her soul.
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