“So do I!” said Lady Forrester penitently. “But you see, dear, I was no more thinking of the Sothernbay doctor at that moment than of the man in the moon. You never in the least described him to me, remember. And this man doesn’t look like a doctor.”
“He is not exactly a doctor now,” said Cicely. “I never thought of him as only a doctor. He was clever in other directions too.”
“Well, he will call in a few days, at least I hope so,” said Amiel, getting up her spirits again, and to do her justice, it was not often she let them go down,—“and then you will see how nice I shall be to him. Has he a wife, by the bye?” she added quickly.
“No,” replied Cicely. They were out in the street by this time, walking briskly homewards. Was it the keen, fresh air—it was a frosty day—which had given the girl’s cheeks the sudden glow which her sister observed, as she answered the question? Amiel, like Mrs. Crichton, though in a general way the most outspoken of human beings, sometimes had her own thoughts about things. “I wonder if Mr. Guildford will call,” she said to herself.
But some days passed without his doing so, and Amiel was beginning to think that either she had been mistaken in imagining her sister’s manner to have been different from usual on the day of the unexpected meeting in the picture-room, or that there was some stronger reason for Mr. Guildford’s staying away than she had then suspected, when, by one of those curious little social coincidences on which hang apparently so many of the great events of life, she met him again at the house of a friend of Sir Herbert’s where they were dining.
Cicely was not with them. The guests were few in number, consisting principally of men of position and mark in science or literature, for the host and hostess were what Lady Forrester described as “horribly clever people,” and their house was a favourite resort of many of the sociably inclined lions of the day.
“I used to hate that kind of dinner-party when we were first married,” she confessed to her sister while dressing for the entertainment. “I used to be always imagining to myself what a little fool they must all think me, and how they must wonder what a grave, middle-aged ‘diplomate’ like dear old Herbert could have seen in me to make him want to marry me. But I’ve quite got over all that now. Not that they don’t think me a little fool, I am quite sure they do, but I am beginning to suspect that very clever people find it rather refreshing sometimes to come across some one utterly unlike themselves and who isn’t the least overawed by all their learning. I am very happy indeed in my profound ignorance—I don’t even offend by possessing a little knowledge. Only now and then I come across some one I really can’t get to talk. Do you remember that terrible Dr. Furnival, the man who could talk twenty living languages, but was never known to make an observation in his own? He was hopeless, and he was always taking me in to dinner at one time! I wonder whom I shall be consigned to to-night.”
“You must tell me all about it to-morrow,” said Cicely. “I am going to bed early. I am rather tired.”
“I don’t think you are looking well,” said Amiel, anxiously. “And you so often say you are tired. Cicely dearest,” she added fondly, “is anything troubling you? Some times lately I have fancied—” she hesitated.
“What?” asked Cicely, smiling. But her smile seemed to Amiel to have strangely little brightness in it. “What have you fancied, Amy?”