A GAME OF CARDS
Should Miss Gossaway have been sitting at her lookout some weeks after Martha's interview with Captain Nat Holt, and should she have watched the movements of Doctor John's gig as it rounded into the open gate of Cobden Manor, she must have decided that something out of the common was either happening or about to happen inside Yardley's hospitable doors. Not only was the sorrel trotting at her best, the doctor flapping the lines along her brown back, his body swaying from side to side with the motion of the light vehicle, but as he passed her house he was also consulting the contents of a small envelope which he had taken from his pocket.
"Please come early," it read. "I have something important to talk over with you."
A note of this character signed with so adorable a name as "Jane Cobden" was so rare in the doctor's experience that he had at once given up his round of morning visits and, springing into his waiting gig, had started to answer it in person.
He was alive with expectancy. What could she want with him except to talk over some subject that they had left unfinished? As he hurried on there came into his mind half a dozen matters, any one of which it would have been a delight to revive. He knew from the way she worded the note that nothing had occurred since he had seen her—within the week, in fact—to cause her either annoyance or suffering. No; it was only to continue one of their confidential talks, which were the joy of his life.
Jane was waiting for him in the morning-room. Her face lighted up as he entered and took her hand, and immediately relaxed again into an expression of anxiety.
All his eagerness vanished. He saw with a sinking of the heart, even before she had time to speak, that something outside of his own affairs, or hers, had caused her to write the note.
"I came at once," he said, keeping her hand in his. "You look troubled; what has happened?"
"Nothing yet," she answered, leading him to the sofa, "It is about Lucy. She wants to go away for the winter."
"Where to?" he asked. He had placed a cushion at her back and had settled himself beside her.