“Yes, even if it is only in your own garden.”
From that time she used to walk with him nearly every day.
Richard Bassett saw this from his tower of observation; saw it, and chuckled. “Aha!” said he. “Husband sick in bed. Wife walking in the garden with a young man—a parson, too. He is dark, she is fair. Something will come of this. Ha, ha!”
Lady Bassett now talked of sending to London for advice; but Mary Wells dissuaded her. “Physic can't cure him. There's only one can cure him, and that is yourself, my lady.”
“Ah, would to Heaven I could!”
“Try my way, and you will see, my lady.”
“What, that way! Oh, no, no!”
“Well, then, if you won't, nobody else can.”
Such speeches as these, often repeated, on the one hand, and Sir Charles's melancholy on the other, drove Lady Bassett almost wild with distress and perplexity.
Meanwhile her vague fears of Richard Bassett were being gradually realized.