"She will be delighted—she dreads the journey."
"Pooh, not she; as long as I am with her, she thinks all must go well."
"A pattern wife!" sighed Kate.
"Yes; no wife can be happy if she does not feel this. Ah, Kate, Kate, I wish you had a good husband!"
"Like yourself! eh, Mr. Winter! but alas!"
"Now, no quizzing, if you please! I'm glad we are at the end of our trajet, if you are going to laugh at me."
The gradually silent change in the Colonel's health and spirits, which had escaped the every-day watchfulness of even Kate's tender guardianship, struck Winter, whose perception was quickened by the, to him, unshaded transition from light to gloom, caused by the cessation of their daily intercourse, with grief and dismay; nor did he rest until he had persuaded his venerated friend to accompany him to an eminent physician, though the Colonel protested, he had not a single symptom of which he could reasonably complain. The doctor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and tried his lungs, asked a good many questions, seemingly irrelevant, as to his spirits, &c., wrote a short prescription, recommended horse exercise, took his fee, and bowed them out. Winter looked dissatisfied; and as he handed the Colonel into the cab, which was waiting for them, suddenly recollected he had forgotten his snuff-box, he returned to the room, but in vain, for the bland physician merely repeated—"Nothing physical, I assure you, sir—mental depression—imaginative disorder."
"Have you found your box?" asked the Colonel, with a significant smile, at least, to Winter's conscience it appeared so. The worthy artist reddened, and replied, gruffly, in the affirmative.
Kate never before felt so profoundly sad, as the day the Winters started for Dover. When she had parted from them at A——, there was the bustle and excitement of the journey, and the expected arrival at a new place, to divert her thoughts. Now she had full time to feel, how much alone she was, how much dependent on her own judgment, her own strength, her own efforts.