“His wife was my maid when I was a child. Yesterday she came to see me—just out of her bed from a long fever. She is naturally in great trouble about her husband, whom she has not seen, the jail being too far off. She has heard something about your defending him when he is tried, and she begged me to see you, and ask you as a mercy to them, to ‘try him,’ as she says.”
“That is what brought me back to America,” he replied.
Olivia said not a word, but walked on. She could not but believe him—but if he had not come on Madame Koller’s account, Madame Koller might have come on his account.
“I have done, and I am doing, the best I can for the poor fellow. Cave has helped me much.”
Then it occurred to Olivia that at least Pembroke ought to get the credit for coming on such an errand.
“How kind it was of you,” she said. “I am so glad—”
“To find I am not such a scamp as you thought me?” he said, good-naturedly.
“Have it any way you like,” she replied. “But I am very glad, and Jane will be very glad, and I’m sure Bob Henry is—and you may come home with me and have some luncheon, and papa will be very glad—he hates Sunday afternoons in the country.”
CHAPTER VI.
Meanwhile poor Mr. Ahlberg, condemned to the solitude of the village tavern, varied by daily visits to The Beeches and occasional ones to his acquaintances, the Pembrokes and the Berkeleys, found life tedious. He wanted to get away, but Madame Koller would not let him. Mr. Ahlberg had now, for some years, had an eye to Madame Koller’s fortune. Therefore, when she commanded him to stay, he stayed. He regarded her infatuation for Pembroke as a kind of temporary insanity, which would in time be cured, and that he would be the physician and would marry his patient afterward.