"And that one thing, Mrs. Penn?"
"I will not disclose it to you, Anne Hereford. The report is common enough in the neighbourhood. Inquire of any of the petty shopkeepers in the hamlet, and you will find it to be so. They will tell you that rumours have been afloat for a long while that Sir Thomas may be seen at night in the pine walk."
She quitted the room as she spoke, leaving on my mind a stronger impression than ever that I had met her somewhere in my lifetime, had talked with her and she with me. There was in her manner an unconscious familiarity rarely indulged in save from old acquaintanceship. It was strange that she and Mr. Chandos should both strike on chords of my memory. Chords that would not be traced.
They were fortunate in this new companion. Gathering a word from one and another, I heard she was thoroughly efficient. And they made much of her, treating her essentially as a lady. She went out in the carriage with Mrs. Chandos; she talked to Mr. Chandos as an equal; she patronized me. But a whisper floated through the house that the only one who did not take kindly to her was Mrs. Chandos.
CHAPTER XIX.
TELEGRAPHING FOR A PHYSICIAN.
Some uncomfortable days passed on. Uncomfortable in one sense. Heaven knows I was happy enough, for the society of Mr. Chandos had become all too dear, and in it I was basking away the golden hours. Looking back now I cannot sufficiently blame myself. Not for staying at Chandos; I could not help that; but for allowing my heart to yield unresistingly to the love. How could I suppose it would end? Alas! that was what I never so much as thought of: the present was becoming too much of an Elysium for me to look questioning beyond it; it was as a very haven of sweet and happy rest.
With some of the other inmates, things seemed to be anything but easy. Lady Chandos was still invisible; and, by what I could gather, growing daily worse. Mr. Chandos, his lameness better, looked bowed down with a weight of apprehensive care. Hill was in a state of fume and fret; and the women-servants, meeting in odd corners, spoke whisperingly of the figure that nightly haunted Chandos.
What astonished me more than anything was, that no medical man was called in to Lady Chandos. Quite unintentionally, without being able to help myself, I overheard a few words spoken between Hill and Mr. Chandos. That Lady Chandos was dangerously ill, and medical aid an absolute necessity, appeared indisputable; and yet it seemed they did not dare to summon it. It was a riddle unfathomable. The surgeon from Hetton, Mr. Dickenson, came still to Mr. Chandos every day. What would have been easier than for him to go up to Lady Chandos? He never did, however; he was not asked to do so. Day after day he would say, "How is Lady Chandos?" and Mr. Chandos's reply would be, "Much the same."
The omission also struck on Mrs. Penn. One day, when she had come into my chamber uninvited, she spoke of it abruptly, looking full in my face, in her keen way.
"How is it they don't have a doctor to her?"