"There is only Hubbard, of all my old acquaintances, in a position to help me," said Mr. Anerley; "and he is the last whom I should like to ask for any such favour."
"I think you are inclined to misjudge the Count, sir," said Will; "and in this case you ought at least to see what he has to say before impeaching his good feeling. After all, you will find a good many men with as much money as the Count, and as little to spend it on, quite as unwilling to oblige an old friend as you half expect him to be."
After a good deal of argument, it was arranged that Mr. Anerley should see the Count on the following morning. Will forced him to this decision by a long description of what would fall upon the St. Mary-Kirby household in the event of his refusal.
"What is your pride compared with their wretchedness?" he said.
"My boy," he replied, "I have no pride, except when I have a good gun in my hand and a good dog working bravely in front of me. Further, do you know so little of your own family as to think that poverty, the nightmare of novelists, would be so appalling to them?"
"Not to them, perhaps; but to you, looking at them."
And that was true of the Chesnut Bank household. Misfortune was as bitter to them as to any other family; only it was for one another that they grieved. They had been educated into a great unselfishness through the constant kindly and half-mocking counsel of the head of the house; but that unselfishness only embittered misfortune. They did not brood over their individual mishaps, but they exaggerated the possible effects of misfortune on each other, and shared this imaginary misery. Mr. Anerley was not much put out by the knowledge that henceforth he would scarcely have the wherewithal to keep himself decently clothed; but it was only when he thought of Dove being deprived of her port-wine, and of Mrs. Anerley being cabined up in London lodgings (though these two were as careless of these matters as he about his matters), that he vowed he would go and see Count Schönstein, and beg him for this present assistance.
"As for Dove, poor girl!" he said to Will, "you know what riches she prizes. You know what she craves for. A look from one she loves is riches to her; you can make her as wealthy as an empress by being kind to her."
"I'm sure no one ever could be unkind to her," said Will.
But the visit to Count Schönstein was postponed next morning; for Dove was worse than on the previous night, and was fain to remain in bed. Of course a physician was called in. He had a long talk with Mr. Anerley, afterwards; and perhaps it was his manner, more than anything he actually said, that disquieted Dove's guardian. What he actually did say was that the young girl was evidently very delicate; that on her tender constitution this slight febrile attack might lead to graver consequences; and that she must at once have careful, womanly nursing and country air. Per se, her ailment was not of a serious character.