When she had arrived at this point in her argument, Basil came back from his mental journey, wherever it had taken him, and speaking like a man wakened suddenly from sleep, said that he thought he should like to bid her goodnight, that he was beginning to feel very chilly.
“You had better take my prescription,” observed Mr. Aggland; and Basil did take the dose, which proved impotent, however, to work the cure its discoverer promised it should effect, for next morning he was so ill he could not rise, and before the following night fever set in, and for a time all his troubles were forgotten.
He raved frantically indeed, but not about his sorrows; as is often the case, his mutterings contained no reference to the cause of his illness; he wandered in imagination, not through the night carrying his child with him, not across the seas to seek his fortune, not over the hills to find Phemie, blue-eyed and auburn-haired; but backwards and forwards—to and fro in a land full of strange fancies—of mad vagaries—of unreal horrors—of fearful delusions—of horrible spectres.
Very rapidly he got worse, so rapidly, indeed, that before Mrs. Montague Stondon could be written to and arrive from Paris, which capital she was then honouring with her presence, the doctors had begun to look very grave, and, to adapt an old saying to present use, although they hoped the best, evidently believed the worst.
When it came to that, Phemie declared that, let the consequences be what they might, she should send for his wife; and Georgina was sent for accordingly.
Almost before Phemie thought it possible she could arrive, Mrs. Basil Stondon reached Roundwood, reached it with the cold hardness, with the insolent sarcasm beaten and pinched out of her face.
“Why did you not write to me before?” she asked, almost fiercely.
“Because I was not certain whether I ought to write at all,” Phemie replied.
“Then he came straight to you: I might have known he would; and Fay is here also, I suppose; and—he showed you the letter.”
“He did, but we will not talk about that now.”