"When the weather is very fine, the brougham or barouche is ordered round about four o'clock, and her ladyship and he go out together. Sir Everard is dropped at his club, while her ladyship shows herself in the Park for an hour. Then Sir Everard is picked up and they drive back home. Other days the baronet never crosses the doorstep."
"Has my uncle any nurse, or any regular attendant besides his valet?"
"He has no nurse but her ladyship, and, by all accounts, he couldn't have a better. She seems to think nothing a trouble. She it is that allus gives Sir Everard his medicine and things, and orders this or the other little dainty to be got ready for him by way of a surprise, and just to tempt his appetite. Day or night, it seems all one to her, she's allus on the spot."
After this they walked on for some time in silence, while Burgo strove to digest what had just been told him. It was certainly one of the last things he would have looked to be told about Lady Clinton, that she made an affectionate wife and a devoted nurse to a man whom it was hardly conceivable she should have married for anything save his money and his rank.
"You remember, Mr. Burgo," resumed Benny after a time, "what a man the guv'nor used to be for having his own way?"
"I have not forgotten."
"Allus very quiet--never any bluster--but his own way he would have. He was one of them men as can't abear opposition. His own way seemed better to him than anybody else's--not, mind you, sir, that it allus was. I could have often proved him in the wrong if he would have listened to argyment, but that was just what he wouldn't do."
"Well, what then?"
"Merely this, sir, that if what I hear is true--and I've no call to doubt it--then a mighty change must have come over Sir Everard. Nowadays he's no will about anything; her ladyship keeps it for him under lock and key. Her will is her husband's will and her own too. Everything's done through her. Sir Everard daren't--or if he dare he won't--give an order direct to any of the servants. What he does is to say, 'My dear, don't you think that such-and-such a thing ought to be done?' or, 'What is your idea, love, about so-and-so?' And then her ladyship decides, and whichever way she decides, it seems all one to Sir Everard. And they do say that his eyes follow her about for all the world as if he was frightened of her, and dared hardly call his soul his own. Oh lord! oh lord!" groaned the old fellow, "what a change to have come over a man, and all the doing of one woman!"
Burgo could have groaned in unison.