"The matter with me?"
"The illness that Dr. Amos said you would never get well from."
Mr. Chandos laughed. "Why, Anne, don't you see?—it was my brother George he spoke of, not me. I never had anything serious the matter with me in my life; we wiry-built fellows never have."
Was it so? Could this great dread be, like the other, a myth? In the revulsion of feeling, my wits momentarily deserted me. Pulses were bounding, cheeks were blushing, eyes were thrilling; and I looked up at him asking, was it true?—was it true!
And got my answer for my pains. Mr. Chandos snatched my face to his, and kissed it as if he could never leave off again. Hot, sweet, perfumed kisses, that seemed to be of heaven.
"But I do not quite understand yet," I said, when I could get away. "You have looked ill; especially about the time Dr. Amos came."
"And in one sense I was ill; ill with anxiety. We have lived, you see, Anne, with a perpetual terror upon us; never free from it a moment, by night or by day. When George was not here, there was the ever constant dread of his coming, the watching for him as it were; and now that he is here the dread is awful. When George grew worse, and it became necessary that some medical man should see him, Dr. Amos was summoned to 'Mr. Harry Chandos;' and I had a bed made up in the west wing, and secluded myself for four-and-twenty hours."
"Did Dr. Amos think he came to you?"
"He thought so. Thought that the sickly, worn-out man he saw lying on the sofa in my mother's sitting-room was Mr. Harry Chandos. I being all the while closely shut up from sight in my temporary chamber. Laken, who has been our medical attendant for a great many years, and in our entire confidence, was unfortunately away from home, and we had to resort to a stratagem. It would not do to let the world or the household know that George Heneage was lying concealed at Chandos."
"Then—when Dr. Laken said Lady Chandos was emaciated and obstinate, he really spoke of him?"