"I beg your pardon, Sir George. Delightful little chap, Yester! Eh? I wonder if I was ever as young as that."
It was evident that Yester's attentions to the wife of another man had not been a recommendation to the sedate scientist. He said dryly: "I don't know whether he's a fool or a knave."
"Well, he isn't either," said Hal. "He's been reading 'Ivanhoe'! You wanted to speak to me of father, Sir George."
"No, my boy; it's in regard to your wife."
Sir George had not only been the Earl's medical adviser as far back as Hal could remember but he had also been his intimate friend as well. Hal was thinking of other things, planning his escape, picturing the welcome the West was keeping for her child, or he would have noticed an extra consideration in the doctor's tone, an added solicitude in his manner.
"Edith?" he queried indifferently and with polite surprise.
"Yes; sit down." The doctor motioned to the little sofa which had its back against the writing-table. Hal sat down carelessly and picked up from the seat the society journal Lady Winifred had put into his hands a few moments before and began to turn its leaves and glance at its pictures, but in a cursory way and with an inclination of the head toward the physician to indicate that he was listening. Of course Sir George did not know—how could he?—that he and Edith had passed into different worlds.
Sir George himself was a study as he stood for a second regarding the other. How was it this custodian of other people's secrets and sorrows, forever intimate with sickness and pain, could look so sufficient, so impeccable, so serene? Well groomed, smooth, and polished to his finger tips, there seemed no surface where trouble or anxiety might stick.
Was it an armor or was it his integument?
"It's quite time you came home," the doctor said, glancing absent-mindedly at his polished finger nails. "You must give some thought to Edith. The life she is leading is exhausting, abnormal. She requires a change. You ought to take her away from London and this fast set."