"No you won't," she said pleadingly—"not if I wish you to come."
"Do you wish me to come?"
"Certainly I wish it."
"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"
"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her well attended to."
The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll see her every day," meaning his patient.
Which he did—not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the peasant-girl, or in any other rôle she chose to assume: it was an amusement she was fond of.
Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did not—But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed. Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain man—he was the reverse—but he held that human beings were men and women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.
One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she might be back in a little.
"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane, after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour," the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like o' her?"