He revives before long, however, when comfortably extended on his sofa, and removed from the heady influences of the lilac perfume and the blackbirds’ song—three amorous cocks apparently courting one hen—he and his companion have settled down into the at all events surface peacefulness of their normal relation of nurse and patient. She has proposed reading aloud to him, and, though he has not accepted the offer with much eagerness, being no great bookman, and, like most men, disliking having his reading done for him, she persists, contrary to her usual gentle habit of following his every suggestion, and guessing every unuttered wish. After all, the manœuvre has its advantages, and he lies resigned, exploring the chart of her dear face, and making several new and delightful little discoveries.
An interruption soon occurs in the shape of a letter for Lavinia—arrived by the afternoon post, overlooked in passing through the hall, and now brought her by a servant. Her colour changes as she recognizes the handwriting. There must be something very wrong in her “State of Denmark,” as she has time to realize in a flash of compunction, for her to feel as she does, that there is an indecency in her reading a letter from Rupert under Binning’s eyes. Yet she must read it at once, too, since the fact of his writing implies something unusual, as he and his father are to return to-morrow morning, and she has never encouraged nor he permitted himself love-letters written only for love’s sake. Asking leave of her companion, formally yet with hurried uneasiness she opens and reads the missive, seen at the first glance to be unaccountably long. The man, to put her at ease and make her feel free from observation, picks up the dropped volume; but over its top, or through its boards—since such little miracles are of easy performance to that most bogus of blind beggars, god Eros—he sees that, whatever her news may be, it is of an oversetting nature.
“They are not coming home to-morrow.”
This cannot be what has upset her. There must be something more.
“Has the baptismal register not turned up yet?”
“Yes, it was found on Thursday in St. Mary Abbotts.”
He must wait her time.
“My uncle is laid up ill in London.”
“Gout?”
“Yes; but not simple gout. He felt an attack coming on, and dosed himself with the very strong remedies which the doctor has always forbidden him; got a chill on the top of that; and now he has driven it in.”