Volume Iii Part 28 (1/2)
”My _dear_ Paul,” she said at length, ”you are not attending to me one bit!”
”I beg your pardon, mother, I think I heard what you said.”
”About the doctor, Paul?”
”I think so,” he answered, trying to recall her words.
”Well, you see, I shall have to get another that being the case.”
”A very good thing, I should say.”
”Paul! the death of an eminent medical man is not a subject for rejoicing.”
”Oh! he is dead. Who is dead, mother?”
”Dr. d.i.c.kson, and you said you heard what I said. Oh! Paul.”
”Well, I hear now, and I do not think I ever heard Doctor d.i.c.kson's name before.”
”After that!” said Lady Lyons, throwing up her hands; ”he was the only man--the only man who quite understood my const.i.tution.”
”Well, I'm sorry he is dead if he was useful to you, mother, but you have been no better and no worse ever since I can remember anything.
Would you mind my leaving you for a moment? I am afraid Grace is not well.”
He left her and went to find his wife.
Grace had recovered herself, and reproached him for making ”a fuss.”
”You know I am not strong,” she said, ”and easily sent up and down. I am like a shuttlec.o.c.k, and sometimes, Paul, I feel that we are not as much alike as we thought.”
”Now you have hurt and vexed me still more,” he said, in a tone of real vexation. ”What discoveries will you make next? In what way am I your inferior? I know in many ways I am, but in what particular am I wanting to-day?”
”My inferior!” said Grace, with sudden pa.s.sion; ”I feel beneath you in all things--in principle, in every thing.”
She covered her face with her hands.
”I cannot understand you, dear,” he said, kindly; ”and if you do not wish to tell what all this means leave it alone. But my hope was that you had learned to confide in me, and I am disappointed. My mother is there, do as you like about seeing her. I said you were not well.”
”I am all right,” she said, throwing off her depression and her penitence at once. ”Go to your mother, Paul; I am sorry you said anything about my not being well, it was only a pa.s.sing indisposition.”
He left her not fully satisfied, but knowing it was useless to press her further.
Lady Lyons was overflowing with motherly sympathy, and fussed in a way Grace thought nearly intolerable, and which in days not so very long ago she would have ungraciously put a stop to.
But Paul's mother was to her a different person from the Lady Lyons she had known and laughed at in the old days, and she bore her attentions with all possible patience.
The trio sat down to dinner with those subdued feelings generally indicative of a past storm.
Lady Lyons resented Paul's evident want of interest in her physicians; and Grace was exhausted, and annoyed with herself for having given way as she had done; while Paul, while trying to converse with his mother, was conscious of a painful impression about his wife which he could not shake off.