"No, not as an utter stranger, Mr. Pomeroy," said Eleanor, gently. "Your confession, as you term it, has been nearly as painful to me as it must have been to you. I almost forget what the words were to which you have made allusion: something foolish, I do not doubt. In any case, we will both try to forget that they were ever uttered. Good-bye."
She held out her hand as she spoke. Gerald took it, and pressed it respectfully to his lips. Then her eyes met his, while a faint smile, that was more akin to tears than laughter, played round her mouth for a moment: for a moment only--the next, he was gone.
[CHAPTER XI.]
KELVIN'S ILLNESS.
Matthew Kelvin found himself considerably better the morning of the day following that on which he had been taken ill at Stammars, but in the course of the afternoon he had a sharp return of the previous symptoms. Then it was that his mother insisted upon sending for Dr. Druce, the family practitioner, and Olive seconded the plea. Up to this time Kelvin had strenuously refused to let any one be called in, but he now yielded reluctantly to his mother's wishes. He had never been ill enough to need the services of a doctor since those far-off juvenile days of measles and scarlatina, and he was loth to believe that there was any necessity for such services now.
However, in the course of the day, Dr. Druce looked in. He felt his patient's pulse, looked at his tongue, and asked the usual questions. Then he took off his spectacles, pursed up his mouth, shook his head at Kelvin as though he were an offending schoolboy, and delivered himself oracularly. "Disordered state of stomach. Nothing serious. Put you right in a day or two. Must diet yourself more carefully in future. What really charming weather we are having."
Everybody agreed that Dr. Druce was seventy years old; many averred that he was nearly eighty. The latter people it probably was who asserted that the doctor was purblind, that his memory was half gone, that it was hardly safe for him to practise, and that he ought to retire and make room for a younger man. The doctor, however, still considered himself to be in the prime of his powers, and as he had attended Mrs. Kelvin herself for a long series of years, and was, besides, an old personal friend of that lady, it was not likely that she would think of calling in any other assistance to her son.
As soon as Dr. Druce's visit had relieved in some measure his mother's anxiety, Kelvin began to express his desire that Olive should get back to Stammers without delay. "I shall be all right in a day or two," he said, "and my mother, or one or other of the servants, will see meanwhile that I want for nothing."
"I shall wait till to-morrow, and see how you are then, before I think of going back," said Olive. "You know that my aunt can do nothing in the way of waiting upon you, and as for the servants, they are all very well in their places, but they would be quite out of their element in a sick-room."
"A sick-room, indeed! You talk as if I were going to be laid up for a month," said Kelvin, impatiently.