Twice a day Dorothea was allowed to see Dolly for a chat. She would gladly have stayed longer than the stipulated fifteen or twenty minutes; but no encouragement to do so was given. Dorothea was keenly aware that, Dolly did not care to have her. A barrier seemed to divide them; and not all Dorothea's efforts could do away with it. "And yet we ought to be friends," she said often to herself.
Mervyn and Edred had each promised separately to look in late that last afternoon—Mervyn to say good-bye to the Tracys, Edred to say good-bye to the Erskines. "About tea-time," both had said; and there was some idea of Dolly coming down for the first time; but though perhaps well enough, she seemed to shrink from the exertion.
The matter was still undecided at four o'clock. "Will she come!" Dorothea asked eagerly, meeting Isabel on the stairs. Isabel gazed absently, with wrinkled brow, and asked "Who?"
"I mean Dolly. Margot said she might be able. Wouldn't it do her good?—to be downstairs, I mean."
Isabel was too much absorbed with one idea to have room in her mind for any other train of thought. "Yes,—no,—I am not sure. Dolly isn't sure yet, I believe," she said vaguely, moving towards the nearest open door on the next landing, with the air of one expecting to be followed. "I have been thinking that I—I—there is something I should rather like to ask you."
Dorothea walked after her into the bedroom, and waited.
Isabel carefully closed the door, and then fidgeted to the fireplace.
"Dolly seems so depressed just now, doesn't she! Has she not seemed so to you?"
"Yes; I wish she did not. But perhaps in a few days she will be better."
"She is getting over the fall. It is not only that now: at least, I believe not. I am speaking privately—I mean I shouldn't like what I say repeated to anybody—but—but—" blundered Isabel, "you see, we seem to know you pretty well now. And you have seen a great deal of the Claughtons."