She evidently meant it, and with a few gasping, choking sobs, Prudence subsided. Though there were two or three violent relapses, each was promptly checked in turn, so that she allowed herself to be undressed, put to bed, tucked in, and left quietly weeping, until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
Next morning she was too ill and unstrung to rise. The consuming anxiety that urged her to be up and doing, to recover her lost sister and flee from London, worked her into a fever. The medical woman, who, much to the patient’s distaste, had established herself in the sick-room, and ruled with a rod of iron, absolutely refused to let her rise. Seeing the papers, and reading or writing letters were likewise prohibited. Prudence had neither the bodily strength nor the firmness of character to resist. She simply wept and moaned, and wrung her hands, and swallowed all the nauseous doses the medical woman prepared for her. Meantime, the fever increased so rapidly, and the poor creature was so prostrate, that Miss Lord advised calling in Dr. Creedy, physician-in-ordinary to the Misses Semaphore. Accordingly, without consulting Prudence, Dr. Creedy was sent for. He was a little, fat, bald-headed man, of few words, and thought Prudence very ill indeed. When he left her room he had a long conversation with the medical woman and Mrs. Dumaresq, pronounced the patient to be suffering apparently from the effect of shock, and enquired where her sister was. Mrs. Dumaresq told him Miss Semaphore had gone to the seaside for a change, having herself been seriously and mysteriously ill.
“I think she ought to be communicated with,” said the doctor, “I should not alarm her, but this may be a grave matter, and it would be wise to let her know that Miss Prudence is not very well. She might help us to soothe her, for Miss Prudence has evidently some trouble on her mind. Unless we can remove the cause of her anxiety, my medicines will have little effect.”
“But we don’t know Miss Semaphore’s address, doctor,” objected Mrs. Dumaresq. “I believe she wrote yesterday to say she was better, but her sister did not tell anyone where she had gone to.”
“No doubt our patient will give it to you if you ask her,” said the doctor. He prescribed a composing draught, ordered a certain course of treatment, which the medical woman guaranteed to carry out, then took his hat and his departure.
Mrs. Dumaresq, like Miss Lord, loved anything that gave her a little temporary importance, so Dr. Creedy had no sooner gone than she approached the bedside of Miss Prudence, and said in her sweetest tones:
“I think, dear Miss Semaphore, that perhaps your sister may be uneasy if she does not hear from you. You know the doctor says you are to make no exertion for a day or two. I forget where you said she was staying, but if you will give me her address, I shall have much pleasure in writing to her and telling her all the news.”
To the speaker’s intense alarm, she had not concluded this apparently harmless sentence when Prudence had a relapse so sudden and violent that it at once brought the medical woman on the scene. Without ceremony—her manners had never pleased Mrs. Dumaresq—she bundled the diplomatic lady into the corridor, and left her reflecting bitterly that since the new boarder’s wife had betrayed such inconvenient knowledge of her family, Miss Lord had been much less civil.
After about twenty minutes the medical woman joined her, and enquired abruptly:
“What were you saying to her to set her off like that again?”