"I suppose it is a put-off," he said to himself; "and she's disappointed because we're not going. Why, what a child she is still! I remember her behaving just like that once at Camberwell, when I'd promised her tickets for the play, and couldn't get 'em. The manager of the T. R. D. L. said he didn't consider the author of 'The Brand upon the Shoulder-blade' entitled to the usual privilege. Poor little Izzie! I remember her running away, and not coming back for ever so long; and when she did make her appearance, her eyelids were red and swollen."
Mr. Smith stooped to pick up a narrow slip of lavender-tinted paper from the garden-walk. It was the cheque which Roland Lansdell had written in payment of the Doctor's services. Sigismund read the letter, and reflected over it.
"I'm almost as much disappointed as Izzie, for the matter of that," he thought to himself; "we should have had a jolly good dinner at the Priory, and any amount of sparkling; and Chateau what's-its-name and Clos de thingamy to follow, I dare say. I'll take George the letter and the cheque—it's just like Izzie to leave the cheque on the ground—and resign myself to a dullish Sunday."
It was a dull Sunday. The unacademical "ish" with which Mr. Smith had qualified the adjective was quite unnecessary. It was a very dull Sunday. Ah, reader, if Providence has some desperate sorrow in store for you, pray that it may not befall you on a Sunday, in the blazing sunshine, when the church bells are ringing on the still drowsy air. Mr. Gilbert went up-stairs by-and-by, when the bells were at their loudest, and, finding the door of his chamber locked, knocked on the panel, and asked Isabel if she did not mean to go to church. But she told him she had a dreadful headache, and wanted to stay at home. He asked her ever so many questions, as to why her head ached, and how long it had ached, and wanted to see her, from a professional point of view.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried, from the bed upon which she was lying; "I don't want any medicine; I only want to rest my head; I was asleep when you knocked."
Ah, what a miserable falsehood that was! as if she could ever hope to sleep again!
"But, Izzie," remonstrated Mr. Gilbert, "you've had no dinner. There's cold lamb in the house, you know; and we're going to have that and a salad after church. You'll come down to dinner, eh?"
"No, no; I don't want any dinner. Please, leave me alone. I only want to rest," she answered, piteously.
Poor honest George Gilbert little knew how horrible an effort it had cost his wife to utter even these brief sentences without breaking down in a passion of sobbing and weeping. She buried her face in the pillows again as her husband's footsteps went slowly down the narrow stairs. She was very wretched, very foolish. It was only a dream—nothing more than a dream—that was lost to her. Again, had she not known all along that Roland Lansdell would go away, and that all her bright dreams and fancies must go with him? Had she not counted upon his departure? Yes; but in November, not in September; not on the day that was to have been such a happy day.
"Oh, how cruel, how cruel!" she thought. "How cruel of him to go away like that! without even saying good-bye,—without even saying he was sorry to go. And I fancied that he liked to talk to me; I fancied that he was pleased to see me sometimes, and would be sorry when the time came for him to go away. But to think that he should go away two months before the time he spoke of,—to think that he should not even be sorry to go!"