When the large party had left the castle, life at Enderby settled down to the calmest, not to say the dullest, routine.
Elfrida Force spent her time in waiting on her invalid brother, reading the old black-letter tomes in the library, and in writing letters to her absent family and reading their letters to herself. Sometimes she walked or rode abroad, but always in company with her brother.
Sometimes the Vicar of Enderby came and dined with them, and played a game of chess in the evening with the earl. Two or three times a week the village doctor looked in to see his chronic patient, and once, on his advice, a telegram to London brought down a titled court physician to see the invalid.
Beyond these no company came to Enderby, and no visits were made by the earl or his sister.
The castle was too remote and too difficult of approach for mere visits of ceremony; and the sick earl was too much of a recluse to encourage or enjoy the visits of his neighbors. So the lives of the brother and sister, in the absence of their relatives, passed in almost monastic seclusion.
And so July, August and half of September passed.
It was on the sixteenth of the last-mentioned month that the village practitioner, after a long visit and talk with his patient, sent a telegram to the London physician, who came to Enderby by the night’s express.
The result of the consultation by the sofa of the invalid patient was this—that the earl must depart for Baden-Baden as soon as possible.
Preparations were immediately made for departure.
Among other precautions, Elfrida Force did not forget Wynnette’s dear dog. She made a visit to the kennels, where Joshua had found friends among his canine as well as his human companions, and there she spoke with the grooms and gave them some money in advance and promised them more on her return if she should find Joshua well and hearty.