“Is that you, Reuben?” the lady called, causing the gardener to put his head through the door with the admission, “It be me, ma’am.”
She exchanged words with him, then proposed to Kingcote that they should go to the drawing-room for tea. On their way she paused in the hall, with talk about the panelling. Pointing to a fox’s head:
“A trophy of last season. We killed, that day, a couple of fields behind Wood End.”
Tea appeared in a few minutes. As Isabel poured out two cups, her guest made a feint of closely examining a framed photograph of Knightswell, which stood on the table. He was less at his ease than on the tiled floor of the conservatory; the dried mud upon his boots showed brutally against the dark carpet, disposing him to savage humorousness. He became aware that the beverage was silently held out to him. Her own cup in hand, Mrs. Clarendon reclined in her chair, and gradually her eyes fixed themselves upon him. He was conscious of the look before he returned it, and, speaking at length, did so as if in reply to a question, though himself interrogative.
“Did you ever visit a London hospital?” Isabel manifested no surprise; her face had even a quiet smile of satisfaction.
“Yes,” she answered. “I once went to see a servant in St. Thomas’s.”
“Ah, I was studying there—let me see, six years ago. My father was a medical man, and determined that I should be the same. At his death I gave it up; I hadn’t finished my course.”
“It was not to your taste?”
“I loathed it. My bad dreams are still of hospital wards and dissecting-rooms. I cannot bear to see the word ‘hospital’ in print. The experience of those years has poisoned my life, as thoroughly as a slip of the lancet would have poisoned my blood.”
“Had you that dislike from the commencement?” Isabel asked, after putting down her empty cup, and crossing her hands on her lap with an air of attention.