"I am sure we are exceedingly obliged to you all," said Emma, colouring from a variety of feelings; "it was very kind of Miss Osborne to think of it, and of you to take so much trouble."
"Do you know it gave me a great deal of pleasure—a very great deal; I don't know when ever I was happier than just while I was thinking of obliging you—I did not mind the trouble in the least."
His eyes were fixed on Emma with a far more eloquent expression than was at all usual with them, and he really seemed to think as he spoke, and to feel particularly happy.
To what extremes of eloquence his new-found felicity might have led him there is now no means of knowing; he was interrupted before he had committed himself by any very pointed declaration, by the sound of the physician's return, which startled Emma into a sudden recollection that to be found by him, sitting tête-à-tête and side by side on the sofa with the young nobleman, might perhaps not unreasonably surprise him. She therefore told him she should be wanted in the sick room, and quietly withdrew; when he, his pleasant reveries broken off thus suddenly, felt himself unequal to meeting any one else with composure, and likewise quitted the room for a seat in the carriage.
As Emma resumed her seat at her father's bedside, she could not for a moment banish the idea which had suddenly entered her mind, that perhaps after all Mr. Howard's jealousy was not ill-founded, and that Lord Osborne did entertain a more than ordinary partiality towards herself. The notion was accompanied with no feeling of self-exaltation; she was positively ashamed that it had intruded itself at such a time, and she felt that had even the moment been more appropriate, the supposition would have given her no pleasure at all. She did not want him to like her for his own sake, and she was annoyed by it for the sake of Mr. Howard's attachment.
But this was not the time when such reflections could or ought to be indulged; it was her business to think of her father, not of herself, and she roused herself to shake them off. As soon as Dr. Denham had taken his leave, her sisters returned to the sick room to tell her what he had said. He had given them no encouragement; had said there was nothing further to be done, that it was true that while there was breath there was hope, but that Mr. Watson's advanced age and broken health made a recovery most unlikely, and even a temporary return of his intellects extremely improbable.
The next morning brought no alteration in the situation of the patient, but it brought Robert Watson to the house. He came, cool and self-possessed as ever, taken up entirely with facts, not feelings, and looking decidedly as if his mind at least never quitted his office, but was still engrossed with the business there transacting. "Deeds not words," was his motto, but the deeds he delighted in would have been uninteresting to nine-tenths of the world, and seemed rather intended to mystify than benefit mankind.
Emma felt she could not love Robert; she shrank from him, and it needed all her self-command and strong sense of propriety to avoid showing how repulsive she found him. The excessive egotism of his conversation and habits seemed to yield to nothing; no feeling, no softness was evinced by his conduct. There was scarcely an emotion betrayed on seeing his father, and what little was discernible whilst in his sick room, had all vanished before he reached the parlour door.
"Well, I must say this is a most unfortunate thing," said he sitting down in his father's vacant chair and stretching out his feet to the fender; "a most unfortunate thing for me indeed: one might have calculated my father would have lived ten years more—he's not such an old man—ten years at least I had reckoned on, and you see how I am taken in. Heaven knows what is to become of you girls—there will not be more than a thousand pounds to divide between you: and it's so unlucky to happen just now, for of course you must come home to Croydon."
"That would be very unlucky indeed, at any time," cried Penelope; "but I hope not quite inevitable. I shall not live at Croydon, I promise you."