A faint smile crossed Thomas Godolphin’s lips. “Do not attempt that, Lady Godolphin,” he replied in the respectful manner of one who tenders earnest advice. “I should be sorry indeed to publicly oppose my authority to yours. You know the servants have, most of them, grown old in our service: and that may plead their excuse: but there is not one of them who would not be obedient to the lifting of my finger, in the cause of their master.”
Lady Godolphin was foiled. Lady Godolphin had long been aware that she should be foiled, if it ever came to an encounter—strength against strength—between herself and Thomas Godolphin. Easy George she could manage, the Miss Godolphins she could put down, Sir George was, now, as a reed in her hands. But Thomas?—he was different. None of them had been so uniformly respectful and courteous to her as Thomas. And yet she had known that he, of all the rest, would not bend to her authority, were any cause to arise why he should not do so.
She sat biting—as far as she dared—her rose-tinted lips; she lifted one hand and toyed with her perfumed ringlets; she opened a fan which lay at her side, and gently fanned herself; she glanced at the still countenance of Thomas Godolphin: and she knew that she must give up the game. To give it up with a good grace was essential to her future ruling: and she was now making up her mind to do this. It would never do, either, for her to stand in the hall on the morrow, call the servants around her, and say, “It is my pleasure that Sir George does not leave this place for Prior’s Ash. Keep him in; hold him in; lock the door; use any necessary means,” while Thomas Godolphin was at hand, to lift—as he had phrased it—his finger, and say, “It is my pleasure that my father does go to Prior’s Ash. Stand back while he passes.” Lady Godolphin was no simpleton, and she could hazard a shrewd guess as to which of the two would be obeyed. So she sat, bringing her mind to make a virtue of necessity, and throw up the plea. In point of fact, she had no cause of objection to Sir George’s returning to Prior’s Ash, except that she did not care to return to it herself. For two reasons: one, that she liked Broomhead best: the other, that she could not yet subdue her fears of the fever. She bent her head, as if examining the chaste devices on her fan, and spoke indifferently.
“You must be aware that my wish to keep Sir George here arises solely from the state of Prior’s Ash. It always has been our custom to spend Christmas there, amongst you all, and I should have had no other thought for this Christmas, but for the illness which arose. Will you guarantee that it is safe for him?”
“Nay, Lady Godolphin. To ‘guarantee’ an assurance of the sort would be impossible at the best of times. I believe that any fears you may entertain now of the fever will prove only a bugbear.”
“The fever has been more than a bugbear to you,” she exclaimed, acidity in her tone.
“Yes,” he sadly answered.
He drew his chair from the table, where he had been taking some refreshment after his journey, and at that moment the hall clock struck two.
“I am keeping you up very late, Lady Godolphin.”
“It is a pleasant change,” she answered. “The life here, with Sir George in his delicate state, is so excessively monotonous, that a few nights of sitting up and days of bed, might prove an agreeable variety. Did I understand you rightly—that you intend to start in the morning?”