When Mr. Moore, some eight-and-forty hours previously, received a hurried visit from Mrs. Grey's servant, Ann Hopley, at the dusk of evening, and heard what she had to say about her mistress, he was excessively astonished, not having had the slightest idea that his services were likely to be wanted in any such way at the Maze. It is possible that some doubts of Mrs. Grey's position crossed his mind at the moment: but he was a good man, and he made it a rule never to think ill if he could by possibility think good; and when he came to see and converse with Mrs. Grey, he felt sure she was all she should be. The baby was born on the following morning. Since then the doctor, as Karl expressed it, had been going in at all hours: Ann Hopley invariably preceding him through the Maze, and conducting him out of it again at his departure. As he marched on to the Maze tonight after the above conversation at the Court, he wondered what Miss Blake had got in her head, and why she should betray so much anger over it.
Three or four days went on. The doctor passed in and out in the care of his patient, and never a notion entered his head that the Maze was tenanted by any save its ordinary inmates, or that one under a ban was lying there in concealment. Ann Hopley, letting her work go how it would, attended on her mistress and the baby; the old gardener was mostly busy in his garden as usual. On the fifth or sixth day from the commencement of the illness, Mr. Moore, upon paying his usual morning visit, found Mrs. Grey worse. There were rather dangerous symptoms of fever.
"Has she been exciting herself?" he privately asked of Ann Hopley.
"She did a little last night, sir," was the incautious admission.
"What about?"
"Well, sir--chiefly talking."
"Chiefly talking!" repeated the doctor. "But what were you about, to let her talk?" he demanded, supposing Ann Hopley to be the only other inmate of the house. "What possessed you to talk to her?"
Ann was silent. She could have said that it was not with her Mrs. Grey had talked, but with her husband.
"I must send a nurse in," he resumed. "Not only to see that she is kept quiet, but to attend to her constantly. It is not possible that you can be with her always with your housework to do."
But all of this Ann Hopley most strongly combated. She could attend to her mistress, and would, and did attend to her, she urged, and a nurse she would not have in the house. From the first, this question of a nurse had been a bone of contention: the doctor wanting to send one in; Ann Hopley and also Mrs. Grey strenuously objecting. So once more the doctor yielded, and let the matter drop, inwardly resolving that if his patient did not get better during the day, he should take French leave to pursue his own course.