Mrs. Hazleton saw that she had gone a little too far—or rather perhaps that she had suggested that which was repugnant to the character of her hearer's mind; for in regard to money matters no one was ever more generous or careless of self than Lady Hastings. What was her's was her husband's and her child's—she knew no difference—she made no distinction.
It took Mrs. Hazleton some time to undo what she had done, but she found the means at length. She touched the weak point, the failing of character. A little stratagem, a slight device to win her own way by an indirect method, was quite within the limits of Lady Hastings' principles; and after dwelling some time upon a recapitulation of all the objections against the marriage with Marlow, which could suggest themselves to an ambitious mind, she quietly and in an easy suggestive tone, sketched out a plan, which both to herself and her hearer, seemed certain of success.
Lady Hastings caught at the plan eagerly, and determined to follow it in all the details, which will be seen hereafter.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
"I feel very ill indeed this morning," said Lady Hastings, addressing her maid about eleven o'clock. "I feel as if I were dying. Call my husband and my daughter to me."
"Lord, my lady," said the maid, "had I not better send for the doctor too? You do not look as if you were dying at all. You look a good deal better, I think, my lady."
"Do I?" said Lady Hastings in a hesitating tone. But she did not want the doctor to be sent for immediately, and repeated her order to call her husband and her daughter.
Emily was with her in an instant, but Sir Philip Hastings was some where absent in the grounds, and nearly half an hour elapsed before he was found. When he entered he gazed in his wife's face with some surprise—more surprise indeed than alarm; for he knew that she was nervous and hypondriacal, and as the maid had said, she did not look as if she were dying at all. There was no sharpening of the features—no falling in of the temples—none of that pale ashy color, or rather that leaden grayness, which precedes dissolution. He sat down, however, by her bed-side, gazing at her with an inquiring look, while Emily stood on the other side of the bed, and the maid at the end; and after speaking a few kind but somewhat rambling words, he was sending for some restoratives, saying "I think, my dear, you alarm yourself without cause."
"I do not indeed, Philip," replied Lady Hastings. "I am sure I shall die, and that before very long—but do not send for any thing. I would rather not take it. It will do me more good a great deal to speak what I have upon my mind—what is weighing me down—what is killing me."
"I am sorry to hear there is any thing," said Sir Philip, whose thoughts, intensely busy with other things, were not yet fully recalled to the scene before him.