'Well,' he replied after a pause, 'I recommend that she should be removed to a quiet country place as soon as possible—to-morrow, if she is able to bear the journey.'
'As you say so, of course it shall be done. My own arrangements do not permit of my leaving Paris at present, but that need make no difference; Mrs Crofton can go accompanied by her maid.'
Again the doctor looked at him, the tone was so indifferent, as if he wished to dispose of the matter at once, and be troubled no more. Merely mentioning the place he thought most suitable for his patient, a quiet little town in the south of France, he bowed coldly, and withdrew.
Charles rose and sauntered to the mantel-piece. 'She acts the fine lady well,' he muttered to himself. 'Ill and out of spirits! She has no cause to be so. As much as I lost she has gained. Yet she acts and speaks sometimes as if she had made a sacrifice for me. I could almost fancy that she regrets that clodhopping fellow. It is a pity, after all, she was so ready to jilt him. She can't expect that I will coop myself up in a wretched dreary place. We are not so very devoted now, either of us, that we require no other company than that of the other.'
In the evening Eliza was better; the feverishness had passed, and it was thought she would be able to leave next day; so Charles went to her room to inform her of the doctor's command, and the fact that the journey was to be made without him.
'I have arranged to remain here yet, and can't alter my plans,' he said. 'But my presence could do you no good; and when you are better you can join me; that is, if you wish to do so.'
If she wished to do so! He would not then care if she did not join him! His words and manner implied that she had become a burden to him, which he would willingly cast off, were it possible; since it was not possible, absent himself from her as much as he could. She turned, sighing, away; and Charles left the room without another word, without a kiss.
It had come now that he was actually estranged from her! He could let her go from him alone, ill as she was, and in a foreign land, the land he had brought her to! It was not with any wild passionate pang, such as she would have felt had she loved him, that she thought this; but a dead cold weight pressed on her heart, and a sense of utter desolation came over her.
'Alone, alone!' she murmured. 'Father, lover, friends, home—I abandoned them all, and for what?—for what?'