“No boat to-morrow, madam,” said the Colonel. “You will, I am sure, be forced to content yourself at Corbin Hall for some days yet.”
“I content myself perfectly,” replied Madame de Fonblanque, with ready grace; “but one must be careful not to take advantage of so much generosity as yours.”
When she was alone in the same old-fashioned bed-room that Farebrother had occupied, enjoying, as he had done, the sparkling wood-fire, she reflected gratefully upon the goodness of these refined and simple-minded people—but she also reflected with much bitterness upon the extremely slim prospect of her getting any money from Mr. Romaine. She had fully counted upon his dread of ridicule, his fear of publicity, to induce him to hand over a considerable sum of money; but she had not in the least counted upon what she considered his truly diabolical offer to come up to his word. To marry Mr. Romaine! She could have brought herself to it, reflecting that he could not live forever; but those few words he whispered to her showed her that it was out of her power to get any money at his death. She believed what he told her—it was so thoroughly characteristic of him—and she would by no means risk the horrors of marrying this embodied whim with that probability hanging over her. She turned it over and over in her mind, wearily, until past midnight, when she tossed to and fro until the gray dawn shone upon the snow-covered world.
But Mr. Romaine suffered from more than sleeplessness that night. The Chessinghams guessed from the accounts given by the servants of the strange visitor that Madame de Fonblanque had turned up miraculously with Colonel Corbin, and after a short interview with Mr. Romaine had disappeared. They knew all about the old report that Mr. Romaine had been very marked in his attentions at one time to the pretty widow and Chessingham shrewdly guessed very near the truth concerning her visit, which truth convulsed him with laughter.
“It is the most absurd thing,” he said to his wife and Ethel Maywood, in their own sitting-room that night. “No doubt the old fellow has some entanglement with her, and finding widows a little more difficult to impose upon than guileless maidens, he’s been trapped in some way.”
“And serves him right,” said Mrs. Chessingham, with energy. “I know he’s kind to us, Reggie—but—was there ever such another man as Mr. Romaine, do you think?”
“The Lord be praised, no,” answered Chessingham. “And he is not only mentally and morally different from any man I ever saw, but physically, too. I swear, after having been his doctor for two years, I don’t know his constitution yet. He will describe to me the most contradictory symptoms. He will profess to take a prescription and apparently it will have just the opposite effect from that intended. Sometimes I have asked myself if he has not, all the time, some disease that he rigorously conceals from me, and he simply uses these subterfuges to deceive me.”
“Anything is possible with Mr. Romaine,” said Ethel quietly. “And yet—he is the most generous of men. Our own father was not half so free with his money to us as Mr. Romaine is. And he seems to shrink from the least acknowledgment of it. How many men, do you think, would allow a doctor to carry his wife and sister-in-law around with him as he does, and do everything for us, as if we were the most valued friends and guests?”
“Oh, Romaine isn’t a bad man, so much as a perverse one,” replied Chessingham, lightly, “and he is a tremendously interesting one.”
At that very moment, Mr. Romaine was in the condition that any man but himself would have called for a doctor—but not for worlds would he have allowed Chessingham to see him then. He understood his own case perfectly—and the one human being near him that was in his confidence was Bridge.