“I thought him very well indeed the last time I saw him,” said Mary; “he can’t have grown much older since then. I wonder,” she added, “how Frogmore got this bad cold—it must have been the very night I went away. I think men cease taking care of themselves when they have a wife to do it for them. And Rogers used to coddle him so—I must blame Rogers. He ought to have returned to his old habits and watched him more carefully when I was away. What is this. Upjames? Tea? Yes, give it me; it will warm me. I must be warm, you know, when I go to my lord.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Upjames, in a trembling voice. He was very pale and there was fright in his voice, though he was a large man, and his restored mistress so slim and little likely to harm anyone. “I—I—am so happy, my lady—to see your ladyship so much better.”
“Oh there has been nothing the matter with me,” said Mary, quickly. “I am always well. But you should not have let my lord catch cold, Upjames, the moment my back was turned. How am I ever to go off on a visit again, however short it may be, when you take so little care of my lord?”
The big butler trembled like a leaf, a gasp came from his throat, his large cheeks hung pendulous with fright. “My lady, I——don’t know how it happened,” he stammered forth.
“Oh, I was only joking,” said Mary, “I am sure it was no one’s fault: only there should be double precautions taken about health—by every one—when the mistress of the house is away.” She gave forth this maxim with a precision that had never been usual with Mary. Altogether it seemed to her sister that Lady Frogmore had never been so sure of herself, so conscious of authority before. She drank her tea before the fire with evident comfort and pleasure in her home coming. “After all,” she said, “there is nothing like one’s own house. What is that I see over there? A rocking horse, is it? I suppose it’s a present for one of the Greenpark children. Yes, Mr. Marsden. How do you find my lord?” Fortunately, as Agnes felt, though she scarcely knew why, the doctor came in at this juncture and saved her all further trouble.
“Not so well as I could wish,” said the doctor, “but very glad to you that you have arrived, Lady Frogmore, and anxious to see you. You must not,” he added, laying his hand on her arm, “look anxious, or as if you thought him very ill. His spirits must be kept up.”
Mary rose and put down her teacup on the table. “I am afraid you find him worse than we thought.”
“No,” he said, “oh, no—but only to warn you. He does look a little ill: but he must not see that you are anxious. You must make an effort, Lady Frogmore.”
“I think I do nothing but make efforts,” she said, with a cloud upon her face, standing with her hands clasped together. Then she added, smiling, “But of course I will do what you tell me. How can he have got so ill the little time I have been away?”
Agnes followed, with her heart beating tumultuously in her bosom. What did it all mean? The little time she had been away! What could it mean? Mary spoke as if she had been absent for three days or so—and it was five years! Oh, what could it mean? Agnes followed, not knowing what to do. On her way to the sick-room Mary took off her cloak and furs and her bonnet, which she piled upon a table in the corridor. “Tell Mason to take them,” she said. Mason was the maid who had left the house when Mary had been taken away.