“Dr. Sugg is in the garden, sir,” he interposed. “Shall I tell him that you are tired or request him to wait till I have received your orders in the library.”
Jeffray frowned and hesitated a moment.
“I will see the rector, Gladden,” he said. “Attend me in the library in half an hour.”
Wilson, who was pulling Dame Meg’s ears, watched Jeffray go lightly along the terrace as though he had forgotten such trifles as fever, physics, and small-pox scars. The flushed alertness of Richard’s face, his restless yet decisive manner, puzzled the painter not a little. It was as though he had drunk of some wonderful elixir since they had turned back from Thorney Chapel after the rustic wedding.
Jeffray, passing the warm walls and high gables of the house as the clock in the turret chimed twelve, went down from the terrace towards the green lawns and the flowering shrubberies, and saw Dr. Sugg, in the distance, holding a critical and appreciative nose over his tulip beds and banks of gilliflower. The borders were gay under the glare of the sun, yet to Richard the red tulips recalled the blood-red flower that Bess had plucked at Holy Cross in her dream.
Sugg’s jovial and ruddy face, with its apple cheeks and merry, black eyes, was turned towards Jeffray as he came down the box-edged path. His broad and humanistical mouth wreathed itself into a hearty smile as he held out both his hands to the squire.
“Thank Heaven, sir,” he said, “that I find you looking so alive and well. I had heard less flattering accounts of you. I am rejoiced to see you so speedily recovered.”
Jeffray’s sympathies leaped out to this jovial old fellow with his twinkling eyes, and shrewd, smiling mouth.
“I am mending fast,” he said, as he blushed and gripped the rector’s hands; “and I am glad to see you, sir, at last. Stott has forbidden me visitors hitherto, as you know, but I can turn the tables on him now. How is Mary?—well, and untouched, eh?”
Sugg’s face beamed heartily.