The Reverend William Yorke had quitted the house, shaking the dust from his shoes in anger, as he crossed the threshold. Anger as much at himself, for having ever given her up, as at Constance Channing; and still most at the Right Honourable the Earl of Carrick.
CHAPTER XLIV. — MR. JENKINS IN A DILEMMA.
I don’t know what you will say to me for introducing you into the privacy of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins’s bed-chamber, but it is really necessary to do so. We cannot very well get on without it.
A conjugal dispute had occurred that morning when Mrs. Jenkins got up. She was an early riser; as was Jenkins also, in a general way; but since his illness, he had barely contrived to come down in time for breakfast. On this morning—which was not the one following the application of mustard to his chest, but one about a week after that medicinal operation—Mrs. Jenkins, on preparing to descend, peremptorily ordered him to remain in bed. Nothing need be recorded of the past week, except two facts: Charles Channing had not been discovered, either in life or in death; and the Earl of Carrick had terminated his visit, and left Helstonleigh.
“I’ll bring up your breakfast,” said Mrs. Jenkins.
“It is of no use to say that,” Jenkins ventured meekly to remonstrate. “You know I must get up.”
“I say you shall not get up. Here you are, growing weaker and worse every day, and yet you won’t take care of yourself! Where’s the use of your taking a bottle a-day of cough-mixture—where’s the use of your making the market scarce of cod-liver oil—where’s the use of wasting mustard, if it’s all to do you no good? Does it do you any good?”
“I am afraid it has not, as yet,” confessed Jenkins.