“Let you die?” he cried excitedly.
“No, no! But think—what will the world say?”
“You are my world,” she said softly, as she nestled to him. “My pride is all gone now. You may say what you will. It has been a struggle, and you have won.”
“No,” he said softly; “you have won.”
He never boasted of the cure that he effected here. Wisely so. But certainly Lady Martlett was in an extremely low state—a state that necessitated change—such a complete change as would be given by a long continental tour, with a physician always at her side.
The world did talk, and said that Lady Martlett had thrown herself away.
“The stupids!” exclaimed Aunt Sophia. “Just as if a woman could throw herself away, when it was into the arms of as good a husband as ever breathed.”
James Scarlett had one or two little relapses into his nervous state, and these were when family troubles had come upon him; but they soon passed away, and the little riverside home blushes more brightly than ever with flowers; the glass-houses are fragrant with ripening fruit; and Aunt Sophia sits and bows her head solemnly over her work beneath some shady tree or another in the hot summer afternoons, the only solitary heart there;—and yet not solitary, for it is filled as freshly as ever with the memory of the dead.
Doctor Scales practises still, in his own way; and though he is somewhat at variance with the profession, they all hold him in respect.
“As they must,” her Ladyship declares, “for there is not a greater man among them all.”