“My dear Lisbeth!” she exclaimed, “how pale and ill you look!”
“I am always pale,” said Lisbeth.
“But, my love,” protested Miss Clarissa, “you are pale, to-day, in a different way. You must be suffering. Dear! dear! How careless in us not to have remarked it before! I almost believe—nay, indeed, I am sure—that you look thin, actually thin!”
“I am always thin,” said Lisbeth.
But Miss Clarissa was not to be consoled by any such coolness of manner. When she looked again more closely, she was quite sure that she was right, that her dear Lisbeth showed unmistakable signs of being in a dreadful state of health. She fell into a positive condition of tremor and remorse. She had been neglected; they had been heartlessly careless, not to see before that she was not strong. It must be attended to at once. And really, if Lisbeth had not been very decided, it is not at all unlikely that she would have been put to bed, and dosed, and wept over by all three spinsters at once.
“I hope it is not that Pen’yllan does not agree with you,” faltered Miss Hetty. “We always thought the air very fresh and bracing, but you certainly do not look like yourself, Lisbeth.”
And the truth was that she did not look like herself. Much as she might protest against the assertion, she was thinner and paler than usual.
“I am not ill,” she said, “whether I look ill or not. I never was better in my life. I have not slept very well of late; that is all. And I must beg you to let me have my own way about it, Aunt Clarissa. It is all nonsense. Don’t fuss over me, I implore you. You will spoil Georgie’s love story for her, and make Mr. Anstruthers uncomfortable. Men hate fuss of any kind. Leave me alone, when they are in the house, and I will take all the medicine you choose to give me in private, though it is all nonsense, I assure you.”
But was it nonsense? Alas! I must confess, though it is with extreme reluctance, that the time came when the invincible was beaten, and felt that she was. It was not nonsense.
One afternoon, after sitting at her bedroom window for an hour, persuading herself that she was reading, while Georgie and Anstruthers enjoyed a tête-à-tête in the garden below, she suddenly closed her book, and, rising from her chair, began to dress to go out.