“But I can hear two people.”
“A gentleman is with her.”
“What gentleman? what is he like?”
There was a strange singing in Nurse Elisia’s ears, as, with her voice now perfectly calm, and her emotion nearly mastered, she described the appearance of the visitor so vividly that Elthorne said at once:
“Oh, it’s Burwood.”
She looked at him quickly, to see that he lay back with his eyes half closed, musing, with a satisfied expression upon his face, while her own grew wondering of aspect and strange.
For her life at Hightoft had been so much confined to the sick chamber, that she knew very little of the neighbours. The Lydons had often been mentioned in her presence, and, from a hint or two let fall, she had gathered that Isabel was engaged to some baronet in the neighbourhood; but she had not heard his name, which came to her now as a surprise, while the fact of his being in company with the daughter of the house, and the satisfied look upon the father’s countenance, left no doubt in her mind that this was the suitor of his choice.
The current of her thoughts was broken by her patient, who seemed to wake up from a doze.
“Ah, you are there?” he said. “I must have dropped asleep, and was dreaming that you had gone out for your walk, and I could not make anybody hear. Have I been asleep long?”
“Very few minutes, sir. In fact, I did not know you were asleep.”