“Yes,” said the doctor, “tell your brother to put them both to bed, and keep them quiet. I should like to prescribe the same for you, Mr. Poynsett; you don’t look the thing, and I suppose you are going to take the ball by way of remedy.”
Raymond thanked the doctor, but was too much employed in enveloping his passengers to make further reply.
It was quite dark, and the fog had turned to misty rain, soft and still, but all pervading, and Rosamond found it impossible to hold up an umbrella as well as to guard the baby, who was the only passenger not soaked and dripping by the time they were among the lighted windows of the village.
“Oh, Raymond! Raymond!” she then said, in a husky dreamy voice, “how good and kind you have been. I know there was something that would make you very, very glad!”
“Is there?” he said. “I have not met with anything to make me glad for a long time past!”
“And I don’t seem able to recollect what it was, or even if I ought to tell,” said Rosamond, in the same faint, bewildered voice, which made Raymond very glad they were at the gate, where stood Julius.
But before Rosamond would descend into her husband’s arms, she opened all her child’s mufflings, saying, “Kiss her, kiss her, Raymond—how she shall love you!” And when he had obeyed, and Rosamond had handed the little one down to her father, she pressed her own wet cheek against his dripping beard and moustache, and exclaimed, “I’ll never forget your goodness. Have you got her safe, Julius? I’ll never, never go anywhere again!”
CHAPTER XXV
The Pebbles
O no, no, no; ’tis true. Here, take this too;
It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on’t. Let there be no honour,
Where there is beauty; truth, where semblance; love,
Where there’s another man.—Cymbeline
When Julius, according to custom, opened his study shutters, at half-past six, to a bright sunrise, his eldest brother stood before the window. “Well, how are they?” he said.