He was nearly at Bexley the next morning by the time Felix had fulfilled his intention of coming down-stairs, and had taken his seat in the Squire's chair before the writing-table, but with his back to the door whence the musical hum would never more issue. Cherry wanted to have put it off; and Clement had proposed an exchange of sitting-rooms; but he had said such things were best faced at once, while no association made much difference.
Cherry was with him, looking over the letters of inquiry and condolence, and sorting out those which she would answer at once, or he undertake by degrees—looking too at the first Pursuivant in which for at least twelve years he had had no share, and which, he said, told him more about the accident than he had yet known.
'Lance has fared better than could have been hoped,' he said. 'I feared for both chest and head.'
'I believe he was very ill the first night,' said Cherry.
'Then—was it my fancy, or did not I hear Gertrude May's voice?'
'How could you hear it?'
'Through the open window, at the hall-door, as Tom May was going. Did she come over with the carriage, good girl?'
'Yes; but we never guessed that you knew it.'
'Many things were borne in on me in a passive sort of way,' said Felix, 'and among them the trust that she was as good an elixir to the boy as in the winter.'
'Quite true! I believe the glow she excited saved him from an illness; but he has come to another conclusion since.'