Again there was a little pause. Then—“He is not very well,” said Markham.
“Oh, that is a pity,” she replied with very little concern.
“That’s not strong enough. I believe he is rather ill. They are leaving the Crosslands sooner than they intended because there’s no doctor there.”
“Then it is a good thing,” said Lady Markham, “that there is such a good doctor here. We are so healthy a party, he is quite thrown away on us.”
Markham did not find that his mother divined what he wanted to say with her usual promptitude. “I am afraid Winterbourn is in a bad way,” he said at length, moving uneasily from one foot to the other, and avoiding her eye.
“Do you mean that there is anything serious—dangerous? Good heavens!” cried Lady Markham, now fully roused, “I hope she is not going to bring that man to die here.”
“That’s just what I have been thinking. It would be decidedly awkward.”
“Oh, awkward is not the word,” cried Lady Markham, with a sudden vision of all the inconveniences: her pretty house turned upside down—though it was not hers, but his—a stop put to everything—the flight of her guests in every direction—herself detained and separated from all her social duties. “You take it very coolly,” she said. “You must write and say it is impossible in the circumstances.”
“Can’t,” said Markham. “They must have started by this time. They are to travel slowly—to husband his strength.”
“To husband——! Telegraph, then! Good heavens! Markham, don’t you see what a dreadful nuisance—how impossible in every point of view.”