“Don’t call me Nelly, sir; and don’t tell me to be reasonable. Don’t you know how they are all talking, these horrible people? Oh, why, why did I bring him here?”
“Whatever was the reason, it can’t be undone now,” said Markham. “Come, Nelly! This is nothing but nerves, you know. You can be yourself when you please.”
“Do you know why he talks to me like that before you?” said Mrs Winterbourn, suddenly turning upon Frances. “It is because he thinks things are coming to a crisis, and that I shall be compelled——” Here the hasty creature came to a pause and stared suddenly round her. “Oh, I don’t know what I am saying, Geoff! They are all talking, talking in every corner about you and me.”
“Run away, Fan,” said her brother. “Mrs Winterbourn, you see, is not well. The best thing for her is to be left in quiet. Run away.”
“It is you who ought to go away, Markham, and leave her to me.”
“Oh!” said Markham, with a gleam of amusement, “you set up for that too, Fan! But I know better how to take care of Nelly than you do. Run away.”
The consternation with which Frances obeyed this request it would be difficult to describe. She had not understood the talk in the drawing-room, and she did not understand this. But it gave her ideas a strange shock. A woman whose husband was dying, and who was away from him—who called Markham by his Christian name, and apparently preferred his ministrations to her own! She would not go back as she came, to afford the ladies in the drawing-room a new subject for their comments, but went out instead by the open door, not thinking that the only path by which she could return indoors led past the window of her mother’s room, which opened on the lawn round the angle of the house. Lady Markham was standing there looking out as Frances came in sight. She knocked upon the window to call her daughter’s attention, and opening it hurriedly, called her in. “Have you seen Markham?” she said, almost before Frances could hear.
“I have left him, this moment.”
“You have left him. Is he alone, then? Who is with him? Is Nelly Winterbourn there?”
Frances could not tell why it was that she disliked to answer. She made a little assenting movement of her head.