“Poor Nan Purcell, to have escaped so long with a clean skin! There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth and covering up of mirrors.”
The petulance in his voice betrayed his resentment at the lack of improvement in her affairs. Her sickness was infinitely mischievous at such a moment, and inspired him with an uneasy and savage impatience. He flung down into a chair, with all his sweet loftiness in peril of toppling into a snarl of unseemly temper. Dr. Hemstruther appeared to be intent upon brushing some of the snuff from his coat.
“The danger is not skin deep, sir,” he said.
“You find yourself quite helpless, Dr. Hemstruther, eh? There, pardon my peevishness—”
“I would not venture the weight of a feather either way, my lord. And she is a bad patient, mens turbida in corpore ægro.”
He sniffed, smoothed his wig, and looked deferentially at his shoes.
“My Lady Purcell is asking for you, my lord.”
“Then she is conscious—of everything?”
“Conscious to the quick, in spite of the heat of the fever. If I may be pardoned—”
His eyes met my lord’s, and Stephen Gore was the more embarrassed of the two.