“What about a doctor? Don’t you think you’d better have one?” asked Sir Philip, fussing helplessly round and feeling as inadequate as most men in similar circumstances. “You may have broken a small bone or something,” he added with concern.
“Doctor? Fiddlesticks!” returned Lady Susan. “Ann’s all the doctor I want. There’s quite a professional touch about that bandage”—extending her foot for him to see. “Thank goodness, most of our girls know how to give first aid nowadays! Now, run along, Philip, and look after that harum-scarum nephew of yours. I know you’re aching to make sure he hasn’t got into mischief during your absence,” she added with a touch of malice.
Sir Philip demurred a little, but finally went away, promising to look in again in the evening. But when evening came Lady Susan had retired to bed, feeling far too ill to receive visitors.
It was not until after Sir Philip’s departure that she would allow herself to admit that she was suffering acutely, and then she lay back against her cushions, looking so white and exhausted that Ann was thoroughly alarmed and despatched Marie in search of the doctor, who promptly prescribed rest and quiet. By the following morning Lady Susan found herself too stiff even to wish to move. She had tripped and fallen suddenly, without being able to save herself at all, and she was more bruised and shaken than she or any one else had suspected.
For the next few days, therefore, she was relegated to the role of invalid. She was suffering a good deal of pain, and in the circumstances Ann felt disinclined to worry her with an account of the predicament in which she and Tony had found themselves during her absence at Evian. So that when Lady Susan asked her how she had amused herself that day, she merely vouchsafed that she had gone up to the Dents de Loup and stayed the night there in order to see the sunrise. Afterwards, it seemed simpler to let it rest at that, rather than enter into fresh explanations. The whole incident had come to assume much smaller proportions in retrospect, and the fact that she and Tony had not encountered any other visitors at the hotel had served to reassure her considerably.
By the end of a week Lady Susan was sufficiently convalescent to hobble about with the aid of a stick, and when Tony called with a huge sheaf of flowers for the invalid, and the news that there was a particularly good programme of music to be given at the Kursaal that evening, she insisted that Ann should go with him to hear it. Ann protested, but Lady Susan swept her objections aside.
“My dear, you’ve been dancing attendance on a fidgety old cripple long enough. Go along with Tony and squander your francs at boule, and drink café mélange or ice-cream soda, or whatever indigestible drinks the Kursaal management provides, and listen to this ‘perfectly ripping programme.’” She shot a quizzical glance at Tony. “And you can tell that crabbed old uncle of yours to come to the villa and keep me amused in the meantime.”
And, since there was never any combating Lady Susan’s decisions, matters were arranged accordingly.
It was unusually gay at the Kursaal that evening. The announcement of a special programme had drawn a large audience, and the terrace was crowded with people sitting at small, painted iron tables and partaking of various kinds of refreshment while they listened to the orchestra. Festoons of coloured lights sparkled like jewels in the dusk, and from the twilit shadows of the gardens below came answering gleams of red and orange, where Chinese lanterns spangled the foliage of the trees. Beyond the gardens lay the sleeping lake, and faint little airs wafted coolly upward from its surface, tempering the heat of the evening.