Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

"What is it?" A gleam of hope sparkled in his eyes as he put the question. A definite accusation he might combat and refute; even a prejudice he might overcome. He prepared himself for the effort. "What is it?" he repeated.

"I do not love him, father," she said. "I think I hate him."

"So do I!" the doctor sighed, sinking suddenly into himself again. Alas for his preparations!

CHAPTER II

It was characteristic of both Pleasance and her father--and particularly characteristic of the latter--that when they met at breakfast next morning they ignored the trouble which had seemed so overwhelming at midnight. The doctor was constitutionally careless. It was his nature to live from day to day, plucking the flowers beside his path, without giving thought to the direction in which the path was leading him. Pleasance was careless too, but with a difference. She did not shut her eyes to the prospect; but she was young and sanguine, and she was confident--of a morning at any rate--that a way of escape would be found. So the doctor gazed through the window as cheerfully as if his title-deeds had been his own; and if Pleasance felt any misgivings, they related rather to the man lying in the next room than to her own case.

"How is he, father?" she asked. "Have you been kept awake much?" The doctor had spent the night on a sofa in order that he might be near the stranger.

"He is not conscious," Doctor Partridge answered, "but I think that the brain is recovering from the shock, and if all goes well he will come to himself in a few hours." Pleasance shuddered. Her father, without noticing it, went on: "But he ought not to be left alone, and I must see my patients. It is useless to ask the servants to stay with him--they are as nervous as hares. So you must sit with him for an hour or two after breakfast, Pleasance. There is no help for it."

"I?" she said.

"Yes, to be sure; why not?" he answered lightly. "You are not afraid, I suppose? There is nothing to be done, and Daniel can be within call."

She gulped down her fears and assented. She was a good girl, though she could not keep the housekeeping bills--nor her own bills, for the matter of that--within bounds. She was used to a lonely life--Sheffield lay nine miles away, and there were few neighbours on the moorland; and her nerves had been braced by many a long ramble over the ling and bracken, where the hill sheep were her only companions.