"I have found my thoughts quite sufficient," he said.
CHAPTER XL
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
Philip's convalescence was a period of enforced companionship between the two. Mr. De Jarnette had to wait the lifting of the quarantine before he could go back to the city. Even the court had to wait for the quarantine. The case would have come on before this had it not been for postponement on account of it. Nobody had defied it but John Harcourt. He had done so twice. The first time Richard received him and took his message to Margaret, watching her closely as she read it.
"Mr. Harcourt?... Oh, yes, I think I will go down—if he isn't afraid. I want to see him."
He heard Harcourt say a moment later, "Oh, hang your quarantine, Margaret! I had to come!"
Margaret! It had come to that. The next time Mr. Harcourt came the master of the house sent a servant for Margaret and walked in the garden while the visitor was there.
If Richard and Margaret had been companions in sorrow they certainly were now in joy. His relief that his negligence had not been visited with the punishment it deserved made him another man than the one she had known. As to the girl,—she was bubbling over with gladness. She even jested with him, calling him "Unker Wichard" once, then blushing at the familiarity, and taking herself to task for it afterwards. But after all, she told herself in impatient protest, they had fought for him side by side—why should they not, for a few short hours at least, rejoice together. He was her foeman still, but the sick-room and its revelations forbade that he should ever seem her bitter enemy again. She would not permit herself to think of the case at issue between them. Philip would live. That was enough now. Let to-morrow and its complications take care of to-morrow. She could not be less than grateful to him for his tenderness to Philip. How sweet the apple blossoms were! And the lilacs!—the bushes that Richard's mother planted, grown to great trees now. How they filled the air with their fragrance. It was a beautiful world! Oh, a beautiful world!
A reaction came, of course. As time passed, a depression—natural enough perhaps—followed the jubilance of those first days. A growing unrest possessed her. She was not quite easy about Philip, though he seemed to be getting well. The doctor came only every other day now—or had until the last few days again. Philip had taken a fancy—just a child's passing fancy, of course—to go into the next room which was cool and dark, and opened into his. She came upon Dr. Anderson one day lifting his eyelids. The next day he brought a friend out with him. She need not be alarmed, he told her. The case had been rather an unusual one and he had spoken to Dr. Hawes about it. That was all. But he asked Margaret to leave them to themselves for a while, which seemed strange to her.
She went down that day to the back porch where Mammy Cely was ironing, and dropped down on the old stone step. It was not Philip alone that troubled her this morning. The situation was pressing upon her more and more each day. How would it all end? and when? It would soon be time for the quarantine to be lifted. And then—She wished sometimes that when the case came up she could go into it with all her old hatred of Richard De Jarnette hot within her. But she knew in her inmost soul that she never could. Sometimes it rose tempestuously as of old, and sometimes it died away as a wind dies, leaving a becalmed ship upon a lifeless sea. What was the matter with her any way? she asked herself angrily. What had got into her that she could not control her moods?... And why should Richard De Jarnette make it all so much harder for her by being first one thing and then another? He was a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!