“Then he must just not be in a hurry,” said Mary; “but all the same, mother, I’ll write the note at once. And, in the mean time, can’t you try to guess what Lilias’s letter is about?”
“It surely isn’t that she has met Captain Beverley again,” said Mrs Western, anxiously, “or surely not that any one else has taken a fancy to her? I never thought Lilias anything of a flirt, but—”
“Oh, no, mother dear, it is nothing of that sort,” said Mary, as she ran down-stairs before her mother. “Don’t make yourself uneasy. I will tell you all as soon as I have sent off the note to Dr Brandreth.”
“We must have tea as soon as possible,” replied her mother. “I will be getting it ready, Mary, and when you have sent the note, go into your father’s study and try to get him to come into the dining-room. It will be better for him than sitting alone in the study when he is feeling ill.”
“Very well,” said Mary. She could not bring herself to share her mother’s apprehensions, she was in a state of such excitement that the whole world seemed to have changed to her. Her father could not but get better and stronger now; mental anxiety, she felt certain, had far more to do with his failing health than any one imagined.
Still when the note—less urgently worded, it must be owned, than had it been written to her mother’s dictation—was dispatched, and she went to the study to seek her father, she felt a little startled. He was sitting in his chair by the fire, half dozing, it seemed to Mary, but when he looked up in answer to her greeting, she saw that his face looked changed somehow, its expression told of pain and oppression greater than he had yet endured.
“Is your head so bad, dear father?” she said, anxiously.
“Very, very bad indeed. I feel perfectly stupid with that sense of oppression, and my sight is so strangely hazy. I could not conceal it from your mother,” he went on, half apologetically, “though you know, my dear, how I always shrink from making her uneasy.”
“Yes,” said Mary, half absently, “I know. Will you come into the dining-room to tea, papa? Mamma sent me to fetch you.”
“Very well. If she wishes it, though I feel as if I would rather stay here. I hope the children will be quiet, poor things. I can’t stand any noise or excitement tonight.”