“What makes you think so?”
“Look at me,” answered Nash. “See if you think it likely. I do not.”
She shook her head doubtingly. He certainly did look too ill to stir—but she remembered the trouble there had been with him; the fierce, wild yearning for exit, that could not be controlled.
“Are you not satisfied? Listen, then: I give you my solemn word of honour not to go out of doors; not to attempt to do so. You must go back to Charlotte and the boy.”
“I’ll see later,” decided Gwinny. “I shall stay here till the afternoon, at any rate.”
And when the afternoon came she took her departure for the Rill. Convinced by Nash’s state that he could not quit his bed, and satisfied at length by his own solemn and repeated assurances that he would not, Gwinny Nave consigned him to the care of Grizzel, and quitted Caromel’s Farm.
Which left the field open again, you perceive. And the Squire and Duffham were there that evening as they had been the previous one.
It was a curious time—the few days that ensued. Gwendolen Nave came over for an hour or two every other day, but otherwise Caromel’s Farm was a free house. Her doubts and fears were gone, for Nash grew worse very rapidly; and, though he sat up in his room sometimes, he could hardly have got downstairs though the house were burning—as Grizzel put it. And he seemed so calm, so tranquil, so entirely passive under his affliction, so resigned to his enfeebled state, so averse to making exertion of any kind, that Miss Gwinny could not have felt much easier had he been in the burial-ground where Church Dykely supposed him to be.
What with his past incarceration, which had endured twelve months, and what with the approach of death, which he had seen looming for pretty nearly half that time, Nash Caromel’s conscience had come back to him. It was pricking him in more corners than one. As his love for Charlotte Nave weakened—and it had been going down a long time, for he saw what the Naves were now, and what they had done for him—his love for Charlotte Tinkle came back, and he began to wish he could set wrongs to rights. That never could be done; he had put it out of his power; but he meant to make some little reparation, opportunity being allowed him.
“I want to make a will, Todhetley,” he said one evening to the Squire, as he sat by the fire, dressed, a huge carriage-rug thrown on his knees for warmth. “I wonder if my lawyer could be induced to come to me?”