"I don't blame you, Robert Lake, as much as I blame them," she took occasion to say as they were parting. "You are a vain, thoughtless, empty-headed fellow, made so, I believe, by your enforced idleness; and they, those two women, are old and crafty. Mrs. Chester was serving her self-interest; the other her unjustifiable woman's vanity. You yielded yourself a willing prisoner to the birdlime spread under your feet, and now your folly has come home with interest. I saw your wife was dying of the pain, if you did not."
Without another word, whether of adieu or apology, she brushed past him up the street; and Mr. Lake turned to his home, something like a beaten dog that dare not lift its tail from between its legs.
[CHAPTER XI.]
The Dream worked out.
Mrs. Lake was better. The bleeding was stopped, the doctor gone, and she seemed comfortable. There was less danger than Miss Jupp had supposed, for the blood-vessel which had broken proved to be only a small one on the chest--not the lungs. To her husband it appeared incomprehensible that she should be in any danger at all: his mind had never admitted the possibility of it.
He was all alive to it now. As long as she lay in bed he scarcely left her chamber. To talk with her much was not allowed, but he sat there, holding her hand, looking into her eyes with the old love in his. What his reflections were, or how great his self-reproaches, was best known to himself. When these men, essentially kind and tender by nature, have to indulge in such remorse, be assured it is not very light. He could not bring himself to believe that any conduct of his had contributed to his wife's illness; still less that he had caused it. That was a flight of fancy not easy to him to understand; but he saw now how ill she must have been all along, and bitterly regretted that he had left her so much alone. Rather than have wilfully ill-treated her, he would have forfeited his life. His love had come back to him, now that it was too late--it may be more appropriate to say his senses had come back to him.
In a day or two she grew so much better that she was allowed to leave her bed for a small sitting-room on the same floor, carried into it by him. Late in the afternoon, he left her comfortably lying back in the easy chair, and inclined to sleep. Taking his hat, he walked out.
His errand was to the doctor. His wife seemed to assume that she should not recover; Miss Jupp and the servants the same; for all he saw, she might be well in a week or two: and he went to put the question. Dr. Marlow had said nothing particular to him of her state, one way or the other, and he could not question him before his wife.
Dr. Marlow was at home, and came to him at once. The two families had been very intimate; on familiar terms one with the other. Mr. Lake plunged into the matter at once, speaking of the danger other people seemed to apprehend, and of his own inability to see it.
"Is she, or is she not, in peril?" he asked. "Tell me the plain truth."