“What a question! How could Richard Bassett move the Court if he was not the heir at law?”
After a long conference Mr. Oldfield returned to town to see what he could do in the way of procrastination, and Lady Bassett promised to leave no stone unturned to cure Sir Charles in the meantime. Mr. Oldfield was to write immediately if any fresh step was taken.
When Mr. Oldfield was gone, Lady Bassett pondered every word he had said, and, mild as she was, her rage began to rise against her husband's relentless enemy. Her wits worked, her eyes roved in that peculiar half-savage way I have described. She became intolerably restless; and any one acquainted with her sex might see that some strange conflict was going on in her troubled mind.
Every now and then she would come and cling to her husband, and cry over him; and that seemed to still the tumult of her soul a little.
She never slept all that night, and next day, clinging in her helpless agony to the nearest branch, she told Mary Wells what Bassett was doing, and said, “What shall I do? He is not mad; but he is in so very precarious a state that, if they get at him to torment him, they will drive him mad indeed.”
“My lady,” said Mary Wells, “I can't go from my word. 'Tis no use in making two bites of a cherry. We must cure him: and if we don't, you'll never rue it but once, and that will be all your life.”
“I should look on myself with horror afterward were I to deceive him now.”
“No, my lady, you are too fond of him for that. Once you saw him happy you'd be happy too, no matter how it came about. That Richard Bassett will turn him out of this else. I am sure he will; he is a hard-hearted villain.”
Lady Bassett's eyes flashed fire; then her eyes roved; then she sighed deeply.
Her powers of resistance were beginning to relax. As for Mary Wells, she gave her no peace; she kept instilling her mind into her mistress's with the pertinacity of a small but ever-dripping fount, and we know both by science and poetry that small, incessant drops of water will wear a hole in marble.