Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/257

 242 at the time; and said he would send her. That was the whole history. Laura Carlton, in her blind jealousy, knew not the bed that she was preparing for herself.

She went straight home, walking fast, and entered the house by the surgery entrance, as she would do now and then in impatient moods, when she could not bear to wait while the street door was opened. Mr. Carlton’s assistant, Mr. Jefferson, was standing there, and raised his hat to her.

“When do you expect Mr. Carlton in?” she asked, as she swept past.

“Mr. Carlton is not out, Lady Laura.”

“Mr. Carlton is out,” she rejoined, turning her angry face upon the surgeon.

He looked surprised. “Indeed no, Lady Laura. Mr. Carlton came in about half an hour ago. He is down in the drug-room.”

Lady Laura did not believe a word of it. Were they all in league to deceive her? She turned to the lower stairs, determined to see with her own eyes and confute the falsehood. This drug-room, sometimes styled shortly the cellar, was a small boarded apartment, to which access could be had only through the cellar. Mr. Carlton kept drugs and other articles there pertaining to his profession; the servants had strict orders never to enter it, lest, as Mr. Carlton once told them, they might set their feet on chemical materials of a combustible nature, and get blown up. They took care to keep clear of it after that warning.

Lady Laura passed through the cellar and peered in. Standing before an iron safe, its door thrown wide open, was Mr. Carlton. Laura saw what looked like bundles of papers and letters within it; but so entirely astonished was she to see her husband, that a sudden exclamation escaped her.

You have heard of this room and this safe before. Mr. Carlton once locked up a letter in it which he had received from his father, the long-ago evening when he first heard of the illness of Mrs. Crane. Laura knew of the safe’s existence, but had not felt any curiosity in regard to it. She had penetrated to this room once in her early married days, when Mr. Carlton was showing her over the house, but never since.

A sudden exclamation escaped her. It appeared to startle Mr. Carlton. He shut the safe door in evident haste, and turned round.

“Laura! Is it you? What ever do you want down here?”

Iaura was unable to say at the moment what she wanted, and in her perplexity spoke something very near the truth. Mr. Jefferson had said he was there, but she thought he was out, and came to see.

She turned away while she spoke, and Mr. Carlton looked after her in surprise, as she made her way quickly up the stairs.

So in this instance, at least, there had been no treachery, and Lady Laura, so far, might have sat down with a mind at rest. The little child had evidently not comprehended her question, when she asked whether Mr. Carlton was indoors then.

the morning subsequent to this, Lady Jane and Lucy were sitting together after breakfast. Lucy had complained of a headache; she was leaning her head upon her hand, when Judith came in with a note. It proved to be from Lady Laura. She had twisted her ankle, she said; was consequently a prisoner, and wished Lucy to go and help her to pass a dull day.

“I should like to go, Jane. A walk in the air may take my headache off.”

“You are sure you have no sore throat?” asked Jane, somewhat anxiously. She had put the question once before.

Lucy smiled. Of course people were suspicious of headaches at this time! “I don’t think I have any sore throat, Jane; I ate my breakfast very well. I did not sleep well last night, and that has made my head feel heavy.”

Lucy found Laura on a sofa in her dressing-room, a pretty apartment on the first ﬂoor.

“Are you quite an invalid?” asked Lucy.

“Not quite; I can manage to limp across the room. But the ankle is swollen and rather painful. Did Jane object to your coming?”

“Not at all. How did you contrive to hurt it, Laura?”

“I was in mischief,” returned Lady Laura, with a half laugh. “And you know, when people do get up to mischief on the sly, punishment is sure to follow. Don’t our first lessons in the spelling-book tell us so?”

“What was the mischief,” returned Lucy.

“I and Mr. Carlton are not upon the best of terms; there is a grievance between us,” was Laura’s answer. “You need not look so serious, Lucy; I do not mean to imply that we are quite cst-and-dog, but we are not precisely turtle-doves. He has secrets which he keeps from me; I know he has; and get at them I will. There’s deceit abroad just now, and I vow and declare I’ll come to the bottom of it.”

Lucy listened in wondering surprise. Laura would say no more. “No,” she observed, “it is nothing particularly suitable to your ears: let it pass, so far. He has got a strong iron safe in the cellar, and in this safe he keeps