"Am I going to be ill?" she asked.
"No," I answered, pooh-poohing the notion.
"Doctor, you dash my hopes!" she said. "I am always happy when I am ill.
It is such a relief."
I had heard her use the phrase twice before, but it was only now that I saw her meaning. Physical suffering was evidently a relief from the mental misery, and this proved that the trouble was of longer standing than I had at first suspected. She had used the same expression, I remembered, when I first attended her, during that severe attack of pneumonia.
Colonel Colquhoun had returned, she told me, but I did not see him that day, as he was out. Next morning, however, I came earlier on purpose, and encountered him in the hall. He was not in uniform, I was thankful to see, for he was very apt to assume his orderly room manners therewith, and they were decidedly objectionable to the average civilian, whatever military men might think of them.
"Ah, how do you do?" he said. "So you've been having honours thrust upon you? Well, I congratulate you, I'm sure, sincerely, in so far as they are a pleasure to you; but I condole with you from the bottom of my heart for your loss. I'm afraid Mrs. Colquhoun is giving you more trouble. Now, don't say the trouble's a pleasure, for I'll not believe a word of it, with all you have to occupy you."
"It is no pleasure to see her ill," I answered. "How is she to-day?"
"On my word I can't tell you, because I haven't seen her. I haven't the entrée to her private apartments. But come and see my new horse," he broke off—he was in an exceedingly good humour—"I got him in Ireland, and I'm inclined to think him a beauty, but I'd like to have your opinion. It's worth having."
The horse was like Colonel Colquhoun himself, showy; one of those high steppers that put their feet down where they lift them up almost, and get over no ground at all to speak of. Having occupied, without compunction, in inspecting this animal, half an hour of the time he considered too precious to be wasted on his wife, Colonel Colquhoun summoned Evadne's maid to show me upstairs, and cheerfully went his way.
But that remark of his about the entrée to his wife's apartments had made an impression. I was in duty bound to follow up any clue to the cause of her present state of mind, and here was perhaps a morbid symptom.