“No, I should not. In my married life I have made no friends till my illness brought you to me; nor should I ever really have known you but for that. How should I get to know any one?”
“You will now, Mrs. Crawley; will you not? Promise that you will. You will come to us at Framley when you are well? You have promised already, you know.”
“You made me do so when I was too weak to refuse.”
“And I shall make you keep your promise too. He shall come, also, if he likes; but you shall come whether he likes or no. And I won’t hear a word about your old dresses. Old dresses will wear as well at Framley as at Hogglestock.”
From all which it will appear that Mrs. Crawley and Lucy Robarts had become very intimate during this period of the nursing; as two women always will, or, at least should do, when shut up for weeks together in the same sick room.
The conversation was still going on between them when the sound of wheels was heard upon the road. It was no highway that passed before the house, and carriages of any sort were not frequent there.
“It is Fanny, I am sure,” said Lucy, rising from her chair.
“There are two horses,” said Mrs. Crawley, distinguishing the noise with the accurate sense of hearing which is always attached to sickness; “and it is not the noise of the pony-carriage.”
“It is a regular carriage,” said Lucy, speaking from the window, “and stopping here. It is somebody from Framley Court, for I know the servant.”
As she spoke a blush came to her forehead. Might it not be Lord Lufton, she thought to herself,—forgetting at the moment that Lord Lufton did not go about the country in a close chariot with a fat footman. Intimate as she had become with Mrs. Crawley she had said nothing to her new friend on the subject of her love affair.