Esther glanced apprehensively at the bed.
"If you don't mind, Lady Clifford, I think we'd better not talk in here. One can't always be certain if he's asleep."
As tactfully as she could she manoeuvred her companion towards the door. Lady Clifford went willingly enough, but on the threshold she paused and said, more distinctly than was necessary, it seemed:
"Yes, yes, you are quite right. But you see I have been afraid he had not the strength to resist any serious disease. You do understand my being so nervous, don't you?"
Esther closed the door with a feeling of annoyance. How silly of Lady Clifford, at the very moment when she had been cautioned! Had the old man heard? It was often difficult to tell about him, when he lay so quiet. She did not want him to be upset by thinking the family were apprehensive about him.
She went to the window and looked out. Her hand still smelled of Lady Clifford's distinctive perfume; she sniffed at it, trying to decide if she liked it or not. It was delicious, but heavy, clinging. What was it the night-nurse had said to her the evening before?
"Isn't Lady Clifford a dream?" the woman had confided gushingly. "Did you ever see anything so lovely? I do so adore her scent when she comes into the room. Yet for all she's such a picture, I never saw anything like her devotion to that old husband of hers—poor dear, she worries so she can't sleep—keeps coming in during the night in her lovely dressing-gown to ask me how he's going on, and if there's any change. He's a lucky old thing, if you want my opinion."
Yes, there was no doubt whatever, Lady Clifford's anxiety for her husband was genuine. She had worked herself into a state of tense nerves. Yet why? Was it possible she was as fond of the old man as the night-nurse believed? Esther could hardly credit that. To begin with there was that conversation at the tea-table, which made it impossible to think that the Frenchwoman loved her husband, at least enough to upset herself as she was doing now. What then could be the reason? Could it be—ah, now perhaps one was getting at it!—could it be that Sir Charles had made some will of which she did not approve? She might easily be anxious for him to recover, so that he might have a chance of altering it. Yes, that was distinctly possible.
And yet, after all, it did not quite fit in with all that her memory held in connection with that little scene at the Restaurant des Ambassadeurs. She made an effort to recall it in detail. Had not Lady Clifford said something about a visit to a fortune-teller of some sort? What was it? Of course! She said the woman went into a trance and described "Charles" lying ill in bed, with a doctor beside him and a nurse.
"Good gracious, it has come true! And I am the nurse!"