“Miss Waring, Miss Waring!” he cried as he approached, “how is your father? I want to ask for your father,” taking off his straw hat and exposing his flushed countenance under the shadow of the green-lined umbrella, which enhanced all its ruddy tints. Then, as he came within reach of her, he added hastily, “I am so glad I have met you. How is he? for he did not give me any address.”
“Papa is quite well, thank you,” said Frances, with the habitual response of a child.
“Quite well? Oh, that is a great deal more than I expected to hear. He was not quite well yesterday, I am sure. He is dreadfully changed. It was a sort of guesswork my recognising him at all. He used to be such a powerful-made man. Is it pulmonary? I suspect it must be something of the kind, he has so wasted away.”
“Pulmonary? Indeed I don’t know. He has a little asthma sometimes. And of course he is very thin,” said Frances; “but that does not mean anything; he is quite well.”
The stranger shook his head. He had taken the opportunity to wipe it with a large white handkerchief, and had made his bald forehead look redder than ever. “I shouldn’t like to alarm you,” he said—“I wouldn’t, for all the world; but I hope you have trustworthy advice? These Italian doctors, they are not much to be trusted. You should get a real good English doctor to come and have a look at him.”
“Oh, indeed, it is only asthma; he is well enough, quite well, not anything the matter with him,” Frances protested. The large stranger stood and smiled compassionately upon her, still shaking his head.
“Mary,” he said—“here, my dear! This is Miss Waring. She says her father is quite well, poor thing. I am telling her I am so very glad we have met her, for Waring did not leave me any address.”
“How do you do, my dear?” said the stout lady—not much less red than her husband—who had also hurried down the steep path to meet Frances. “And your father is quite well? I am so glad. We thought him looking rather—thin; not so strong as he used to look.”
“But then,” added her husband, “it is such a long time since we have seen him, and he never was very stout. I hope, if you will pardon me for asking, that things have been smoothed down between him and the rest of the family? When I say ‘smoothed down,’ I mean set on a better footing—more friendly, more harmonious. I am very glad I have seen you, to inquire privately; for one never knows how far to go with a man of his—well—peculiar temper.”
“Don’t say that, George. You must not think, my dear, that Mr Mannering means anything that is not quite nice, and friendly, and respectful to your papa. It is only out of kindness that he asks. Your poor papa has been much tried. I am sure he has always had my sympathy, and my husband’s too. Mr Mannering only means that he hopes things are more comfortable between your father and—— Which is so much to be desired for everybody’s sake.”