“Will he be blind?” gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe, which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted with grief and unable to control it.
The young doctor laughed blandly. “Blind? No, indeed,” he replied. “He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago, but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter. Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox.”
“Can you call a carriage for my aunt?” asked Robert. He went close to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. “I am going to have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be willing to go home with you in it.”
“Of course I will,” replied Fanny.
“You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed about,” Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his aunt's ear.
Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, “Robert, you must come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here and see him myself.”
“Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia,” he replied, soothingly. He met the doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect that—why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle after her so many years? But he merely said:
“There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further when she is in such a state of mind, but—” Then he paused significantly.
“You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?” said Robert.
“Mighty poor,” replied the doctor.