“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Isabey with a wan smile, “coming to fetch me meant traveling twenty-five miles over mountain roads in December after a fortnight of snow.”
“At all events,” cried Colonel Tremaine expansively, “I was able to find Captain Isabey, and, unlike our son, he was in a condition to be moved, and the surgeon said if he could be made comfortable and have rest and proper treatment for a couple of months, his right arm and right leg would be as good as his left arm and left leg. So I and my boy, Hector, wrapped him up in blankets, bundled him in the carriage——”
“And drove most of the way himself,” said Isabey in a voice of gratitude.
“And here he is, and I think, my dear Angela, if you could get him some of your aunt’s excellent blackberry wine——”
Angela disappeared as soon as the word blackberry wine was mentioned. In a few minutes she returned with a glass of it, piping hot with spices in it. By that time she had recovered her composure and was the Angela of old.
“This,” she said, smiling as she handed the glass to Isabey, “is an Elizabethan drink—one of what Mr. Lyddon calls his formulas. In the Elizabethan days, you know, people made wine out of everything.”
“And very good wine, too,” responded Isabey. “Better, no doubt, than the doctored stuff of the post-Elizabethan days.”
He took the glass from Angela’s hand and drank the mulled wine, warm and comforting. The wine and the fire brought the color into his pale face and warmth into his chilled body. Angela, leaning her elbow upon the mantle, said meditatively and with the air of the chatelaine of Harrowby: “What would be the best room for Captain Isabey?”
“Richard’s room,” suggested Lyddon. “It’s on the same level with the study.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Colonel Tremaine.