“You mustn’t worry, mother. It’s beyond the wit of man to make me fat.”
Lady Lane did not pursue the subject, but she continued to look anxiously at him. To turn her thoughts, he handed her a note from the nurse reporting that Dr. Gaisford was wholly satisfied with Miss Maitland’s progress and would in future not need to see her more than once a day.
“That ought to make you happier, Eric,” said his mother.
“It does. I don’t know what I should do, if I lost Ivy...” His voice was graver than he had intended, and he decided to go on and to fortify himself by taking his mother into his confidence. “You remember the last time we discussed her? You do like her, mother, don’t you? You do—approve? As soon as she’s well enough, we’re going to get everything fixed up. Don’t tell the guv’nor yet, because you know he’s temperamentally incapable of keeping a secret. But you are pleased, aren’t you?”
Lady Lane bent down and kissed his forehead.
“My blessed boy! It’s time you had a little happiness. And it’s certainly time you had a wife to look after you.”
What with his letters and the papers, which Sir Francis brought up in person, Eric narrowly avoided being late for luncheon; and his scheme of diet and exercise was again postponed by his mother’s suggestion that he should come out with her in the car. He salved his conscience in consenting by the reflection that he would at least be in the open air; when, however, Lady Lane suggested after tea that he should lie down until dinner, he began to scent a conspiracy.
“You’re looking so wretchedly tired and thin that I want to keep you from working,” confessed his mother.
“Well, I’ll join the conspiracy,” said Eric.
For a week he spent half the day in bed and the other half motoring or walking in Lashmar Woods. If he failed to put on any weight, at least he began to feel less tired. The ghosts that lay in wait for him in London seemed to have been driven away by the sunshine and scented wind of the garden. Every day the nurse wrote that Ivy was maintaining steady progress; he had two reassuring letters from Gaisford and at last a pencilled note from Ivy herself.