"Adèle," she cried at last, "for Goodness' sake put down that book. Whatever the doctor may say about your not being crossed, I'm quite sure—and so I told him only yesterday—that so much reading is very bad for the mind, especially in hot weather. Why, I can't even get through the paper; and you look as pale as a ghost. Oh," wringing her hands in desperation, "if I only knew what to do with you!"
"Only don't excite yourself, mamma," said Adèle languidly.
"Excite myself? That is not a very dutiful way of addressing your mother, Adèle, especially when what you call my excitement is solely on your account."
"I know it, mamma dear," said Adèle gently, putting down the obnoxious volume. "Forgive me if I annoyed you, but really I wish so much that you would cease being anxious about me. I shall be better as soon as ever the weather is a little cooler."
"And how long may we suppose that will be?" Mrs. Churchill panted, and began again agitating desperately the latest fan, a feathered one. "I tell you what it is, if this goes on I shall shut up the house and leave London altogether."
She spoke defiantly, as if London would be greatly the sufferer by such a step.
Adèle shook her head: "You would certainly not like it, dear. No: I'll tell you what to do. You must get Mary Churchill to stay with you here. It will be pleasant for her to see a little of London, and you know Aunt Mary will be charmed. Send me away somewhere for a fortnight. I have a kind of longing for the sea." The young girl closed her eyes. "I can imagine it, mamma, always so fresh and beautiful—Lord Byron's 'deep and dark blue ocean.' How nice it would be after the tiresome, dusty streets and squares! I shall get better there directly; I feel it."
Mrs. Churchill sighed impatiently: "One would think to hear you, Adèle, that a young lady could live at the seaside by herself, without any protection. Pray, little Miss Wisdom, how am I to send you to this sea which you describe so romantically? I do believe those poetry-books are at the root of all the mischief. I wish they were all drowned in that same blue ocean. Blue, indeed! I never see it anything but a dirty gray. I suppose I want the fine poetic insight. And instead of helping me you have started another difficulty. I promised your aunt Mary to show your cousin a little of the world this season; of course it would have been pleasanter for you to have gone out together; you are such different styles that it might have been very safely done. I must say it is extremely tiresome to have all one's plans upset. I wouldn't mind so much if I could see any way out of all this, but really and truly I was never so utterly at sea in my life."
"Write to Aunt Mary," said Adèle cheerfully, "and leave me to manage the rest."
"Leave you, indeed! I might as well leave a baby. I know your unpractical schemes of old. Dear me! I wish I could think of some feasible plan."