Lady Anne laid down two golden coins and a florin near the grateful patient's inkstand, stuffed the prescription into the pocket of her tweed coat, and stumped out to her cab.
"Druce," she said, when the door was opened for her at Suffolk Square, "I shall want you and Twyford to come up and help me pack after lunch. I am going to Market Harborough to-morrow."
She returned unexpectedly after the Christmas holidays, walking a thought more lamely than before, and with a new absorbed gentleness in her manner. She kept her room for three days, writing busily. Many callers, some of them strangers to the servants who admitted them, drove up in cabs and carriages. For the first time since she had taken the rooms her brother, Lord Windybank, spent two nights in the house. Fenella's empty bed was made up for him. On the evening of the second day, after dinner, the two maid-servants were called up to Lady Anne's sitting-room. The earl, a little horsey-legged man, with the face, hair, chin, and voice of his sister, was standing on the hearth-rug. His eyes were inflamed, and he blew his nose violently from time to time on an Indian silk handkerchief, an assortment of which he seemed to keep in the various pockets of his frieze suit. Old Mr. Attneave, the solicitor, stood by the writing-desk, wrapped in the grave professional manner that covers all human contingencies. The girls curtsied, signed a document, laboriously, in a space indicated by the lawyer's chalky finger, curtsied again, and turned to leave the room. Lady Anne called them back, handed each of them a couple of bank-notes from a little pile beneath an enamelled paper-weight, and kissed the dazed hand-maidens on the cheek.
"Be good women," she said, gravely. "Do your duty by your mistress. If I have given cause of offence to either of you, or made your work hard and ungrateful, by word or deed, remember I asked your pardon for it. And now bid your mistress come and see me as soon as is convenient."
Mrs. Barbour entered the room five minutes later with a white, scared face.
"Mrs. Barbour, this is Lord Windybank, my brother. Mr. Attneave I think you have met before. Stop snivelling, Windy;—please do. Won't you sit down? I'm going away to-morrow, Mrs. Barbour, for a short stay in another neighborhood, and whether I shall come back is rather doubtful. No, it isn't nonsense, Windy; I caught the red-headed one's eye when he didn't know I was looking. The other was too old to let anything out. Mrs. Barbour, I want to see your little girl before I go away."
"I'll telegraph for her at once, m'lady."
Lady Anne pursed her lip. "Telegraph for her in the morning," she said. "It's late, and I don't want the child to come up at night. Besides, it will spoil her rest."
"Are you ill, m'lady?" Mrs. Barbour asked, much mystified. There seemed to be so little change in the long white fretful face.
"Oh, dear, yes; quite seriously, ceremoniously ill, I assure you. Please don't look at me that way. You can't see anything. I don't believe any of them can, though they pretend to. And now about Fenella. Mr. Attneave, will you please explain?"