Mr. Buchanan was very much shaken with physical illness and weakness next morning, than where there is nothing more healing for a spirit that has been put to the question, as in the old days of the Inquisition, but by rack and thumbscrew still more potent than these. His head ached, his pulses fluttered. He felt as if he had been beaten, he said, not a nerve in him but tingled; he could scarcely stand on his feet. His wife had her way with him, which was sweet to her. She kept him sheltered and protected in his study under her large and soft maternal wing. It was to her as when one of her children was ill, but not too ill—rather convalescent—in her hands to be soothed and caressed into recovery. This was an immense and characteristic happiness to herself even in the midst of her pain. In the afternoon after she had fed him with nourishing meats, appropriate to his weakness, a visitor was announced who startled them both. Mr. Morrison, the writer, sent up his name and a request to have speech of Mr. Buchanan, if the minister were well enough to receive him. There was a rapid consultation between the husband and wife.
“Are you fit for it, Claude?”
“Yes, yes, let us get it over: but stay with me,” he said.
Mrs. Buchanan went down to meet the man of business, and warn him of her husband’s invalid condition.
“He is a little low,” she said. “You will give no particular importance, Mr. Morrison, to any despondent thing he may say.”
“Not I, not I,” cried the cheerful man of business. “The minister has his ill turns like the rest of us: but with less occasion than most of us, I’m well aware.”
Mrs. Buchanan stayed only long enough in the room to see that her husband had drawn himself together, and was equal to the interview. She had a fine sense of the proprieties, and perception, though she was so little of a sensitive, of what was befitting. Morrison perceived with a little surprise the minister’s alarmed glance after his wife, but for his part was exceedingly glad to get rid of the feminine auditor.
“I am glad,” he said, “to see you alone, if you are equal to business, Mr. Buchanan, for I’ve something which is really not business to talk to you about: that is to say, it’s a very bad business, just the mishap of a silly woman if you’ll permit me to say so. She tells me she has confided them to you already.”
“Mrs. Mowbray?” said the minister.
“Just Mrs. Mowbray. The day of Frank’s majority is coming on when all must come to light, and in desperation, poor body, she sent for me. Yon’s a silly business if you like—a foolish laddie without an idea in his head—and a lightheaded woman with nothing but vanity and folly in hers.”