Miss Perfect was, indeed, better, and Doctor Drake, though a little reserved, spoke, on the whole, cheerily about her. And she saw a good deal of her kind old friend, Parson Wagget; and also, was pronounced well enough to see her lawyer, Mr. Jones, not that Doctor Drake quite approved of business yet, but he thought that so eager a patient as Miss Perfect might suffer more from delay and disappointment. So there were a few quiet interviews on temporal matters.
William was a little disquieted at receiving no letter from Gilroyd for some days after his arrival. But there came at last a short one from Doctor Drake, which mentioned that he had seen the ladies at Gilroyd that morning—both as well as he could desire; and that Miss Perfect had got into a troublesome dispute with some tenants, which might delay her letter a little longer, and then it passed to shooting anecdotes and village news. Such as it was, he welcomed it fondly—enclosing as it did the air of Gilroyd—passing, as it must have done, in its townward flight from Saxton, the tall gate of Gilroyd—penned by the hand which had touched Violet Darkwell’s that very day, and conned over by eyes on whose retinas her graceful image lingered still. Even tipsy Dr. Drake’s letter was inexpressibly interesting, and kept all the poetry of his soul in play for that entire evening.
Miss Violet consulted with Miss Wagget, and agreed that in a day or two they might write a full account of Miss Perfect’s attack and recovery to William, whom it had been judged best, while there was still any anxiety, to spare the suspense of a distant and doubtful illness.
But this is an uncertain world. The message, when it did go, went not by post but by telegraph, and was not of the cheery kind they contemplated.
When William returned to his lodgings that evening, oddly enough projecting a letter to Aunt Dinah, in the vein of the agreeable Baron de Grimm, whose correspondence he had been studying, he found upon his table a telegram, only half an hour arrived.
It was sent “From the Rev. J. Wagget, Saxton Rectory, to M. William Maubray,” &c., &c., and said simply—
“Miss Perfect is dangerously ill. Come to Gilroyd immediately.”
A few hours later William was speeding northward in the dark, for a long time the only occupant of his carriage, looking out from time to time from the window, and wondering whether train had ever dragged so tediously before—thinking every moment of Gilroyd and dear old Aunt Dinah—reading the telegram over and over, and making for it sometimes a cheery, and sometimes the most portentous interpretation; then leaning back with closed eyes, and picturing a funereal group receiving him with tears, on the door-steps at home. Then again looking out on the gliding landscape, and in his despairing impatience pressing his foot upon the opposite seat as if to impel the lagging train.
When William reached London he found at his old lodgings two letters, one from Doctor Sprague, the other from Miss Perfect, which had been lying there for some days.
Having a wait of two hours for his train he was glad to find even this obsolete intelligence. That which, of course, interested him most was written with a very aged tremble in the hand, and was very short, but bore the signature of “poor old auntie.” It was as follows—