"I will call again later," he said; "and hear what Grosse's report of you is, before he goes back to London. Rest, Lucilla—rest and compose yourself."
A heavy footstep sounded suddenly behind us as he spoke. We both turned round. Time had slipped by more rapidly than we had thought. There stood Herr Grosse, just arrived on foot from the railway station.
His first look at me seemed to startle and disappoint him. His eyes stared into mine through his spectacles with an expression of surprise and anxiety which I had never seen in them before. Then he turned his head and looked at Oscar with a sudden change—a change, unpleasantly suggestive (to my fancy) of anger or distrust. Not a word fell from his lips. Oscar was left to break the awkward silence. He spoke to Grosse.
"I won't disturb you and your patient now," he said. "I will come back in an hour's time."
"No! you will come in along with me, if you please. I have something, my young gentlemans, that I may want to say to you." He spoke with a frown on his bushy eyebrows, and pointed in a very peremptory manner to the house-door.
Oscar rang the bell. At the same moment my aunt, hearing us outside, appeared on the balcony above the door.
"Good morning, Mr. Grosse," she said. "I hope you find Lucilla looking her best. Only yesterday, I expressed my opinion that she was quite well again."
Grosse took off his hat sulkily to my aunt, and looked back again at me—looked so hard and so long, that he began to confuse me.
"Your aunt's opinions is not my opinions," he growled, close at my ear. "I don't like the looks of you, Miss. Go in!"
The servant was waiting for us at the open door. I went an without making any answer. Grosse waited to see Oscar enter the house before him. Oscar's face darkened as he joined me in the hall. He looked half angry, half confused. Grosse pushed himself roughly between us, and gave me his arm. I went up-stairs with him, wondering what it all meant.