‘The matter?’
‘Do you mean that you have not observed how ill she is looking?’
‘No; nothing particular.’
‘Phœbe, I cannot imagine what you have been thinking about. I thought you would have saved her, and helped Miss Charlecote, and you absolutely never noticed her looks!’
‘I am very sorry. I have been so much engaged.’
‘Absorbed, you should call it! Who would have thought you would be so heedless of her?’
He was gone. ‘Still crazy about Lucy,’ was Phœbe’s first thought; her second, ‘Another brother finding me heedless and selfish! What can be the matter with me?’ And when she looked at Lucilla with observant eyes, she did indeed recognize the justice of Robert’s anxiety and amazement. The brilliant prettiness had faded away as if under a blight, the eyes were sinking into purple hollows, the attitude was listless, the whole air full of suffering. Phœbe was dismayed and conscience-stricken, and would fain have offered inquiries and sympathy, but no one had more thoroughly than Lucy the power of repulsion. ‘No, nothing was amiss—of course she felt the frost. She would not speak to Honor—there was nothing to speak about;’ and she went up to her brother’s room.
Mr. Randolf was out with Mr. Currie, and Phœbe, still exceedingly busy writing notes and orders, and packing for her journey, did not know that there was an unconscious resolution in her own mind that her business should not be done till he came home, were it at one o’clock at night! He did come at no unreasonable hour, and found her fastening directions upon the pile of boxes in the hall.
‘What are you doing? Miss Charlecote is not going away?’
‘No; but I am going to-morrow.’