Mrs. Manners gave the old mammy a glance of reproof, a signal that alarmed me vastly.
“Oh, tell me, Mrs. Manners! You will speak the truth. Tell me if she is gone away?”
“My dear boy, she is here, and under this very roof. And you shall see her as soon as Dr. Barry will permit. Which will not be soon,” she added with a smile, “if you persist in this conduct.”
The threat had the desired effect. And Mrs. Manners quietly left the room, and after a while as quietly came back again and sat down by the fire, whispering to Aunt Lucy.
Fate, in some inexplicable way, had carried me into the enemy's country and made me the guest of Mr. Marmaduke Manners. As I lay staring upward, odd little bits of the past came floating to the top of my mind, presently to be pieced together. The injuries Mr. Marmaduke had done me were the first to collect, since I was searching for the cause of my resentment against him. The incidents arrived haphazard as magic lanthorn views, but very vivid. His denial of me before Mr. Dix, and his treachery at Vauxhall, when he had sent me to be murdered. Next I felt myself clutching the skin over his ribs in Arlington Street, when I had flung him across the room in his yellow night-gown. That brought me to the most painful scene of my life, when I had parted with Dorothy at the top of the stairs. Afterward followed scraps of the years at Gordon's Pride, and on top of them the talk with McAndrews. Here was the secret I sought. The crash had come. And they were no longer in Mayfair, but must have taken a house in some poorer part of London. This thought cast me down tremendously.
And Dorothy! Had time changed her? 'Twas with that query on my lips I fell asleep, to dream of the sun shining down on Carvel Hall and Wilmot House; of Aunt Hester and Aunt Lucy, and a lass and a lad romping through pleasant fields and gardens.
When I awoke it was broad day once more. A gentleman sat on the edge of my bed. He had a queer, short face, ruddy as the harvest moon, and he smiled good-humouredly when I opened my eyes.
“I bid you good morning, Mr. Carvel, for the first time since I have made your acquaintance,” said he. “And how do you feel, sir?”
“I have never felt better in my life,” I replied, which was the whole truth.
“Well, vastly well,” says he, laughing, “prodigious well for a young man who has as many holes in him as have you. Do you hear him, Mrs. Manners?”