Lydia took down her hands and showed a face so ravaged by the emotions of the colloquy that the physician in her godfather sprang up through the wounded jealousy of the man. “Lydia, my dear, you must stop—this is idiotic of me to allow you—not another word. You must go into the house this instant and lie down and rest—”
He bent over her with his old, anxious, exasperated, protecting air. Lydia seized his hands. Her own were hot and burning. “Rest! I can’t rest with all this unsettled! I go over and over it—how can I sleep! How can you think that your little opiates will make me forget that my children may be helpless, with no one to protect them—” She looked about her wildly. “Why, little Ariadne may be given to Madeleine!” Her horrified eyes rested again on her godfather. She drew him to her. “Oh, help me! You’ve always been kind to me. Help me now!”
There was a silence, the two exchanging a long gaze. The man’s forehead was glistening wet. Finally, his breath coming short, he said: “Yes; I will help you,” and, his eyes still on hers, put out a hand toward Rankin.
The younger man was beside them in a stride. He took the hand offered him, but his gaze also was on the white face of the woman between them. “We will do it together,” he told her. “Rest assured. It shall be done.”
The corners of Lydia’s mouth twitched nervously. “You are a good man,” she said to her godfather. She looked at Rankin for a moment without speaking, and then turned toward the house, wavering. “Will you help me back?” she said to the doctor, her voice quite flat and toneless; “I am horribly tired.”
When the doctor came back again to the arbor, Mrs. Sandworth was with him, her bearing, like his, that of a person in the midst of some cataclysmic upheaval. It was evident that her brother had told her. Without greeting Rankin, she sat down and fixed her eyes on his face. She did not remove them during the talk that followed.
The doctor stood by the table, drumming with his fingers and grimacing. “You must know,” he finally made a beginning with difficulty, “I don’t know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks best for her children’s future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children—to mortgage all your future—”
Rankin broke in with a shaking voice and a face of exultation: “Good God, Doctor! Don’t grudge me this one chance of my life!”
The doctor stared, bewildered. “What are you talking about?” he asked.