In spite of his patient’s beauty, Dr. Netherbridge could not help wondering how so proud a man as Sir Philip was considered had ever been so far carried away by his feelings as to wed a girl of gypsy origin. Lady Cranstoun seemed to divine what was passing in his mind. Raising herself to a sitting position, she tapped one slender well-arched foot upon the ground while she said, as though in answer to his thought:
“Of course, you wonder how Sir Philip came to marry me. I can see that in your face. When I was only eight years old I got blamed for something, as we were on the road going from fair to fair in the summer. So I ran away in a rage, and walked till I was tired and fell asleep under a hedge by the wayside, in Devonshire. A rich lady drove by, the Hon. Mrs. Neville, a widow without children, Sir Philip Cranstoun’s eldest sister. Because I was so pretty, she had me lifted into her carriage, and took me to her beautiful home and had me educated, taught French, and music, and dancing, and drawing, and all that, meaning me to be a governess. Every now and then I broke loose and went tramping through the fields and lanes after my own people, whom I loved the best all along. Often and often, when my fingers ached with practising the piano, and I felt all stiff in tight clothes and shoes, I’d long for the old free life again. But when I saw my people, stealing out at night to them, they begged me to stay where I was. I could help them with money, and times were hard. Before my mother died she made me promise to remain a lady, and Mrs. Neville was kind enough to me by fits and starts, and very proud of what training and education had done. She used to show me off as a sort of successful experiment, too, before people, and that made me mad. She was a hard, capricious woman, like all the Cranstouns in nature, and was all for breaking what she called my absurd pride, and reminding me I’d only been a vagrant after all. But she didn’t do so much of that as she’d have liked, because I told her I’d run away, and that wouldn’t have suited her, as I played and read to her, and amused her, and she couldn’t well do without me. But I never could be reconciled to the notion of being a dependent, and so when Sir Philip Cranstoun came on a visit—he was a handsome enough man of five-and-twenty then, and me only a little bit over sixteen—and he glared at me, and could hardly let me out of his sight, and said he loved me, I got all excited between the notion of being a great lady and being loved and being free from Mrs. Neville’s taunts. But Philip wanted me to run away with him, but I wouldn’t hear of it, and refused to speak to him. I was very pretty then, prettier than you can think just seeing me now, and he was regularly crazy about me. So, early one morning, he made me meet him in a church at Torquay, and we were married. Just three years ago it was yesterday, a day I shall curse as long as I live!”
“Surely,” said the doctor, as she paused, apparently lost in sombre thought, “Sir Philip must have been very deeply attached to you?”
“Yes,” she returned, bitterly, “and for how long? First, nothing was too good for me, but that state lasted only a few weeks, and even then I was afraid of him. Then violent, raging scenes of jealousy if, when we were in Italy, I so much as looked at a waiter and asked him for bread. Then, forever storming at me, and reproaching me, if a gondolier so much as called me the ‘beautiful signora.’ And, after that, scenes constantly. I’ve a temper like fire myself, I own. We Carewes have never been known for meekness, and even when I was a baby child I’d been taught to think myself a princess. All his life Sir Philip had his own way in everything, and all who came in his path had obeyed him, cowed by his masterful temper and sullen fury. But I withstood him. I thought he loved me well enough to let me have my way, and when I found out my mistake I began to hate him, and more than once tried to run away from him. But he followed, and swore he would murder me if I dared, gypsy as I was, to bring disgrace upon his ancient name. Gradually, my will and my health seemed to be breaking down. Our first child pined away and died, because I could not care for it—could not look at it. It was his child, like him, I thought, even at that age, and so I could not love it. When his son died, Sir Philip was mad with anger, but I had grown past caring. It isn’t all my fault, Dr. Netherbridge,” she added, suddenly, while big tears rolled down her cheeks. “I may have been silly when I married, but I tried my utmost for over a year to love Sir Philip, and to please him, but he is more a fiend than a man, I think, and I would rather die than see a child of mine grow up resembling him. It is all these thoughts which, together with my awful anxiety for my father and Jim, are breaking my heart, and ruining my health. It is hate, and terror, and misery, and cruel, cruel anxiety, which make me starve myself and hope to die. But now that I have trusted you, and told you everything, you will befriend me, will you not? Come to-morrow early, and let me know everything—everything, mind—that took place in court to-day, and I will let you cure me, if you choose. Will you promise?”
“I promise,” he said, “to do everything in my power to serve you,” and with that assurance he took his leave.
PROLOGUE.—PART II.
As Dr. Netherbridge left Lady Cranstoun’s apartments, and proceeded down the broad oak staircase to the ground floor, he found a man servant waiting for him in the hall.
“Sir Philip has just arrived, sir, and wishes to see you before you go. Will you kindly come to the library?”
The little doctor followed the man, filled with considerable curiosity as to what manner of man could have inspired so strong a sensation of fear and dislike in the breast of his young wife. Lady Cranstoun’s father had spoken of the son-in-law who would not acknowledge his existence as the “gray wolf.” But then Gypsy Carewe was hardly an unprejudiced person, and Dr. Netherbridge, who always desired to preserve an impartial mind, reminded himself of the fact that a girl of Clare Cranstoun’s undisciplined, keenly emotional nature would necessarily be an extremely trying companion to a man as reserved and proud as Sir Philip was popularly supposed to be.
“Dr. Netherbridge, sir.”