Ill; tut, tut! What was she feeling? Was she sick; had she a pain; had she a cough? He lit another candle to look at her. Had she taken her temperature. Where was the thermometer?
With an unutterable failing of the heart, the atmosphere of her whole life as Lady Gerardine seemed suddenly to close round her once more; the intolerable solicitude, the tyrannic fondness, the perpetual, ineluctable watchfulness, how had she endured it? But she must be calm. What was it Baby had said? "Anything would be better than a scandal." These holy walls, this consecrate house—oh, no, they should never echo the wranglings of her most unholy union!
Sir Arthur was turning over the trinkets on her dressing-table. Where was the thermometer?
She did not know.
Not know where the thermometer was!
"I don't think I've got one," said Lady Gerardine, faintly. "But it's not fever; it's not that! Indeed, I only want rest——"
He turned, in real indignation and surprise.
"Not got one?"
"Perhaps if you were to ask Aspasia——" The suggestion was coupled with a wild look at the door.
Sir Arthur laughed, not very pleasantly. One would almost have thought she wanted to get rid of him. Women were certainly incomprehensible creatures.