Tom and his portmanteau reached Pincote together a day or two after his last conversation with the Squire. Mrs. McDermott understood that Tom had been invited to spend a week there in order to assist her brother with his books and farm accounts. It seemed to her a very injudicious thing to do, but she did not say much about it. In truth, she was rather pleased than otherwise to have Tom there. It was dreadfully monotonous to have to spend one evening after another with no company save that of her brother and Jane. She was tired of her audience, and her audience were tired of her. Mr. Bristow, as she knew already, could talk well, was lively company, and, above all things; was an excellent listener. She had done her duty by her brother in warning him of what was going on between Mr. Bristow and her niece; if, after that, the Squire chose to let the two young people come together, it was not her place to dispute his right to do so.
Tom was very attentive to her at dinner that day. Of Jane he took no notice beyond what the occasion absolutely demanded. Mrs. McDermott was agreeably surprised. “He has come to his senses at last, as I thought he would,” she said to herself. “Grown tired of Jane’s society, and no wonder. There’s nothing in her.”
As soon as the cloth was removed, Jane excused herself on the score of a headache, and left the room. The Squire got into an easy-chair and settled himself down for a post-prandial nap. Tom moved his chair a little nearer that of the widow.
“I have grieved to see you looking so far from well, Mrs. McDermott,” he said, as he poured himself out another glass of wine. “My father was a doctor, and I suppose I caught the habit from him of reading the signs of health or sickness in people’s faces.”
Mrs. McDermott was visibly discomposed. She was a great coward with regard to her health, and Tom knew it.
“Yes,” she said, “I have not been well for some time past. But I was not aware that the traces of my indisposition were so plainly visible to others.”
“They are visible to me because, as I tell you, I am half a doctor both by birth and bringing up. You seem to me, Mrs. McDermott, pardon me for saying so—to have been fading—to have been going backward, as it were, almost from the day of your arrival at Pincote.”
Mrs. McDermott coughed and moved uneasily on her chair. “I have been a confirmed invalid for years,” she said, querulously, “and yet no one will believe me when, I tell them so.”
“I can very readily believe it,” said Tom, gravely. Then he lapsed into an ominous silence.
“I—I did not know that I was looking any worse now than when I first came to Pincote,” she said at last.