“Now be reasonable, and listen to me. Standing in your wet clothes, or wandering about the country, will not mend matters in the least. Unless you do what I ask you, I will not take care of Fay; I will not even put her to bed, nor take charge of her for a single night.”
“But why should I remain?” he began; which sentence Phemie cut short by directing a meaning glance towards her uncle, who at once laid his hand on Mr. Stondon’s arm and led him from the room.
Then Phemie rang for her maid, and gave Fay into her charge, after which she unfolded the missive Basil had left with her, and read one of the most glowing and tender loveletters it had ever fallen to her lot to peruse.
Her first idea was that her senses must be playing her some trick; her next was a purely feminine wonder as to what manner of man could have become so desperately enamoured of Georgina Stondon.
“After that,” said Mistress Phemie to herself, “I will never disbelieve in witchcraft again;” and she remained standing beside the fire, not so much shocked as astonished—lost, in fact, in such a labyrinth of amazement and conjecture as completely bewildered her senses.
“I would not have believed it, Basil,” she said, “if I had not seen it; and I do not believe it yet.”
Mr. Aggland brought their unexpected guest downstairs again to the drawing-room, and then left him and his niece to talk the matter over together.
“I quite agree with you, Phemie, that he is mad,” he whispered ere he went; “but he will be better in the morning if you can only induce him to eat something and go quietly to bed. Let him talk—it will do him good.”
Having received which piece of advice, Phemie went back to the man she had once loved so passionately, and spoke to him the words I have written.
“I would not have believed it had I not seen it, and I do not believe it yet.”