As Doctor McKirdy unceremoniously signified that he could dispense with her presence, as he unlocked the door for her to pass through, something in Lucy's face made him follow her, unwillingly, into the passage. "What is it?" he said sharply.
"Oh, Doctor McKirdy! Do you think she will die?"
"Die? Are ye mad, my poor lass? There's no question of such a thing. She's more likely to die o' cold than anything else! Now go downstairs and send your fine friend Mr. Boringdon and McGregor this way. We've got to move her to the Queen's Room. There have been big fires there all this week—regard for the furniture, the apple of Mrs. Turke's eye, I said they were to get it ready—but we shall have a business getting her down there."
The long, painful progress down the winding staircase was safely over. Barbara was comfortably settled in the great square canopied bed, where, if tradition could be believed, Queen Elizabeth and her less magnificent successor had both, at intervals of fifty years, reposed. Madame Sampiero's Scotch attendant was installed as nurse, and there was nothing left for Lucy Kemp to do but to go home to her solitary breakfast at the Grange. Boringdon, after having done his part, and a very useful one, in lifting and carrying Mrs. Rebell down the two flights, had retreated into the broad corridor, and was walking up and down waiting—he himself hardly knew for what.
But Doctor McKirdy had quite made up his mind as to the next thing to be done. "Now then, you must just take Miss Kemp home again, and I charge you to see that she has a good breakfast! Take her down through the Park. The village will be a buzzing wasps' nest by this time; half of them seem to think—so Mrs. Turke's just told me—that we're all burnt to cinders! You just stay with the poor lass as long as you can, and don't let Miss Vipen or any other havering woman get at her to be asking her useless questions. If I want you I'll send to the Grange."
And so it was to Doctor McKirdy that Lucy owed the happy, peaceful hours spent by her that morning. Boringdon had dreaded the going back to the Cottage, to his mother's excited questionings and reflections, to her annoyance that he had gone to the Grange, rather than to her, for help. He knew he would have to tell her everything. She was not a woman from whom it was possible to conceal very much, and in the long run she always got at the truth, but just now it was much to be able to put off his return home.
Dear Lucy! How good, how sensible, how quiet she had been! She stumbled over the porch flag-stone, and he drew her arm through his. So together they walked down to the Grange. Oliver had never before breakfasted with the Kemps; how comfortable, how homely everything was! The eggs and bacon seemed crisper and fresher, also better, than those ever eaten at the Cottage; the tea poured out by Lucy was certainly infinitely nicer—not for a moment would Oliver have admitted that this was owing to the fact of its being a shilling a pound dearer than that made by his mother!
Each tacitly agreed not to speak of all that had just happened at the Priory. They talked of all sorts of other things. Lucy heard with startled interest that Oliver was thinking very seriously of giving up his land agency, and of going back, if it were in any way possible, to London. What had become the great central desire of his life must never be mentioned to any human being, not even to his dear friend Lucy, till its realisation was possible—legally possible. But even to talk of his plans, as he was now doing, was a comfort; his present listener, unlike his mother, always seemed to understand his point of view, and to realise why he had altered his mind without his being compelled to go into tiresome explanations.
After to-day Lucy and Mrs. Rebell would surely become friends. Even within the last few days Barbara had said to him, "I should like to see more of Miss Kemp. It was a pity she and her mother called when I was away." He liked to think of these two in juxtaposition. If the thought of life without Barbara was intolerable, not indeed to be considered,—once she was free from that West Indian brute, his great love must, in the long run, win return,—the thought of existence with no Lucy Kemp as friend was distinctly painful. He, Barbara, and Lucy, would all be happy; and then, not yet, but in some years to come, for she was still so young, his and Barbara's friend would marry some good honest fellow—not Laxton, no, but such a man as he himself had been till Mrs. Rebell came to the Priory, one to whom Lucy's fortune would be useful in promoting a public career.