“Well, you may propose it, I can only suggest privately to you, and have no wish to put myself forward. If they will send us home, I shall be ready whenever Gwyneth likes, and the carriage can take back the clothes.”
They turned to walk toward the house, Maurice anxious to find his sisters, and settle with them what they would wish to have done.
It was soon arranged, and just as Captain Hepburn had suggested. The invitation to the younger Miss Duncans to remain with their sisters, had already been given, through the thoughtful kindness of Charles, and although it was impossible both should accept it, it was gratefully taken advantage of by Sybil, who shrank from the idea of being the one to break the intelligence to Mr. Duncan, and gladly persuaded herself that she could be more use at “the Ferns” to Hilary herself, while Gwyneth would certainly be much the best able to act for her father alone.
The carriage was ordered immediately, and Gwyneth stealing up stairs to take one more look at the invalids, found Hilary had just been positively ordered by Dr. Pilgrim to go to bed, where he hoped a composing draught would procure necessary
sleep, and avert the symptoms of fever which he reluctantly admitted were becoming stronger.
Gwyneth, however, was not informed of this alarm; she stayed to see Hilary comfortably settled for the night, and as her heavy eyelids closed almost as soon as her head touched the pillow, it was hoped by all her nurses that a good night’s rest would cure every thing that was wrong. Sybil wished to remain with her, but there was really nothing to be done, and both patients appearing to be quietly asleep. Victoria persuaded her to trust them to the watchfulness of Mrs. Gainsborough, and return with her to the company for the present; and her entreaties being enforced by a threat, that if she did not come down, Miss Fielding would remain with her upstairs, Sybil was obliged, though somewhat reluctantly, to yield the point.
As they were issuing from the house, they met Mr. Farrington strolling about near the door; he joined them immediately, and after inquiring earnestly for the sufferers up stairs, he turned to Sybil, and expressed, in very gentlemanlike and pleasant words, his strong admiration of her promptness in action and swiftness of foot.
Sybil, of course, like a great many other people when undergoing a compliment, or accused of a virtue, took refuge in denying the facts, declaring herself peculiarly slow in action, and undecided in thought, and hardly even allowing that she could run faster than other people; although, to say the truth, her forest-life, and habits independent of governess and dancing-master, had given, or at least had not taken away, a power and ease of motion not common to many young ladies.
Mr. Farrington did not persist in compliments which were evidently received with as much shy reluctance as conscious pleasure; but changing the conversation, first discussed with her the details of the accident, listening with extreme interest to Sybil’s enthusiastic gratitude to Captain Hepburn and Mr. Huyton, and then led her on, how she hardly knew, to give a long detail of their usual mode of life; their quiet habits, their
father’s state of health; followed by glowing descriptions of the lovely forest scenery, through which they were wont to roam, the quaint manners of the woodmen, the vagrant ways of the gipsies, and a hundred other particulars, which Sybil detailed with a poetic feeling for the romance of their situation peculiarly attractive to him.