The change in the baronet’s demeanour was striking.
“Eh—what?” he cried, wheeling round and making what almost amounted to a snatch at the letters. Then, having pushed the others contemptuously aside, he resumed his position in the window, hurriedly tearing open the envelope.
The butler meanwhile was busying himself about the room, putting things tidy that had got out of their places or were otherwise disarranged. A quick gasp of dismay which escaped his master caused him to pause in his occupation.
“Karslake,” said the latter, in explanation, for the old butler was, as we said, privileged, having been in the household almost since Philip’s birth, “you will be sorry to hear that Mr Philip has met with an accident—climbing those infernal mountains,” he added, more to himself than the servant.
“Not serious, I trust, Sir Francis?” said the latter, in real anxiety, for Philip was a prime favourite in the Claxby household, save with one, and that not the least important member of it.
“No, thank God! He got hit by a falling stone, and can’t put his foot to the ground. Confined to his room, he says.”
“I hope he’ll be properly taken care of in them foreign parts, Sir Francis,” said Karslake, shaking his head in John Bull-like scepticism as to any such possibility.
“Oh, yes. There’s an English doctor attending him as well as the foreign one. Thank Heaven it’s no worse. Is her ladyship down yet? But never mind—I’ll find her anyhow,” he added to himself, going to the door. And as he did so it was noticeable that he walked with a slight limp.
Lady Orlebar was up but not down, which apparently paradoxical definition maybe taken to mean that, arrayed in a dressing-gown, she reposed comfortably in a big armchair by her bedroom window. Her occupation was of a twofold character, in that she was assimilating coffee and reading Truth.
In externals she was a large well-built woman of middle age, handsome after a coarse, rubicund fashion, though a purplish hue which had succeeded in her cheeks the roseate flush of youth, would almost excuse the severe verdict of that hypercritic who should define her charms as somewhat “blowsy.” Her temper could not even be described as “uncertain,” for there was no element of uncertainty about it, as poor Sir Francis had already realised, to his sorrow. Her disposition was domineering and exacting to the last degree, and she would do nothing for herself that she could get anybody else to do for her—presumably to make up, if somewhat late in the day, for half a lifetime spent in perforce doing everything for herself. From such a one as this it was hardly likely Sir Francis would meet with much sympathy in the flurry and anxiety into which the news of his son’s accident had thrown him.