Josephine, a romantic and imaginative Gaul, had long believed that her mistress had a secret love affair. She drew her own inferences; she sympathized, and she commanded the household to keep silence respecting Miss West’s mysterious errand. The morning after the ball, when diphtheria developed, the house was rapidly emptied. Even Josephine fled, and left her lady in the hands of trained nurses. Mr. West and a few domestics stuck to their posts, the infected quarter being rigorously isolated by means of sheets dipped in disinfectant fluid.
Few of the gay guests ventured to leave cards at the house. Diphtheria is an awful scourge, and this is the age of microbes. In old times ignorance was bliss.
Many kind inquiries and anxious messages came by letter, and not a few men questioned Mr. West at his club. His daughter was such a lovely creature, so full of vitality, she enjoyed every moment of her life. Oh, it would be a thousand pities if she were to die!
Strange as it seemed, there was no more regular inquirer than Mr. Wynne. On the day when Madeline was at her worst, when three grave doctors consulted together in her boudoir, Mr. Wynne actually came to the house; and later he appeared to be continually in the club—which was more or less empty. The season was past. People were on the wing for the seaside or the moors; but Mr. Wynne still lingered on in town. Mr. West was constantly knocking up against him in the club hall or reading-room, and the more he saw of him the better he liked him. He was always so sympathetic somehow about Madeline, although he had scarcely known her, and took a sincere interest in hearing what the doctors said, and how they could not understand how or where she had caught the infection. There was not a single case of diphtheria in their neighbourhood.
And his daughter’s dangerous illness was not the little man’s only anxiety. Part of his great fortune was also in a very dangerous condition. The panic in Australia was spreading, and though he bore a stout heart and refused to sell—indeed, it was impossible to dispose of much of his stock—yet he never knew the hour or day when he might not find himself a comparatively poor man. As soon as Madeline was better and fit to move he would go to Sydney, and look after his own affairs. Meanwhile he began to retrench; he withdrew his commission for the lease of a moor, for a diamond and emerald parure; he put down all his horses but two; and he placed the Belgrave mansion on the market. The house was too large to be comfortable, and the sanitary arrangements were apparently unsafe.
As soon as the invalid was pronounced fit to move she was taken to Brighton, where, there being no risk of infection, Mr. and Miss West and suite were comfortably established in one of the best hotels, and at first the invalid made tolerable progress towards recovery. By the 1st of September she was permitted to go out in a bath-chair, or even to take a short drive daily. All who saw her agreed that her illness had told upon her most terribly. Her colour had departed, her eyes and cheeks were hollow; her beauty was indeed a faded flower—a thing of the past!
CHAPTER XXXIX.
WHITE FLOWERS.
As soon as practicable Madeline stole a visit to Mrs. Holt, Mr. West having much business of importance in London.
“I have been ill,” she gasped as she tottered into the familiar kitchen, “or I would have come back long ago.”
“So you have, I declare. Dear heart alive! and aged by years, and just skin and bone. Sit down, sit down,” dragging forward a chair and feeling for the keys, with a view to a glass of wine for Mrs. Wynne, who looked like fainting.