"Is she usually of an excitable disposition?" he inquired, when we discussed the matter together in the drawing-room.
"Not in the least," I replied. "I should say she is what might be called a very evenly-dispositioned woman."
He asked one or two other questions and then took leave of us, promising to call again next day.
"I cannot understand it at all," said my wife when he had gone; "Gertrude seemed so well last night. Now she lies upon her bed and complains of this continued pain in her head and the numbness in all her limbs. Her hands and feet are as cold as ice, and her face is as white as a sheet of note-paper."
During the afternoon Miss Trevor determined to get up, only to be compelled to return to bed again. Her headache had left her, but the strange numbness still remained. She seemed incapable, so my wife informed me, of using her limbs. The effect upon the Duke may be better imagined than described. His face was the picture of desolation, and his anxiety was all the greater inasmuch as he was precluded from giving vent to it in speech. I am afraid that, at this period of his life, the young gentleman's temper was by no means as placid as we were accustomed to consider it. He was given to flaring up without the slightest warning, and to looking upon himself and his own little world in a light that was very far removed from cheerful. Realizing that we could do no good at home, I took him out in the afternoon, and was given to understand that I was quite without heart, because, when we had been an hour abroad, I refused to return to the hotel.
"I wonder if there is anything that Miss Trevor would like," he said, as we crossed the piazza of Saint Mark. "It could be sent up to her, you know, in your name."
"You might send her some flowers," I answered. "You could then send them from yourself."
"By Jove, that's the very thing. You do have some good ideas sometimes."
"Thank you," I said quietly. "Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley is praise indeed."
"Bother your silly quotations!" he retorted. "Let's get back to that flower-shop."