"And no doubt the discussion of what primarily concerns me is what kept Dr. Mackenzie so long this afternoon."
"How did you know he stayed?"
"My good Helen, though I am in bed, I am neither deaf nor an imbecile."
"Oh, I know," Helen said with a seriousness which might as well have been mockery as stupidity. "I gave him—I gave Dr. Mackenzie tea. He was driving further, and it's such a stormy day."
"Quite right. He looks overworked—ill. I don't suppose he is properly cared for."
"He has a cough. He says he often gets one," Helen almost pleaded, and she went, at the first opportunity, from the room.
She encountered Jane's solemn and sympathetic stare. "I can't have neglected him, can I?" she asked of the little girl in the pinafore, and the shadows on the landing once more became alive with the unknown. "He does cough a lot, Jane, but he says it's nothing, and he tells the truth." She added involuntarily and with her hand at her throat, "I've been so happy," and immediately the words buzzed round her with menace. She should not have said that; it was a thing hardly to be thought, and she had betrayed her secret, but it comforted her to remember that this was nearly the end of January, and before long the Easter fires would burn again and she could pray.
Between the present and that one hour in the year when she might ask for help, Zebedee's cough persisted and grew worse. He had to own to a weakness of the lungs; he suffered every winter, more or less, and there had been one which had driven him to warmer climes.
"And you never told me that before!" she cried, with her hand in that tell-tale position at her throat.
"My dear, there has been no time to tell you anything. There hasn't been one day when we could be lavish. We've counted seconds. Would I talk about my lungs?"