Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/395

 380 Mr. Drone could make nothing of her. Once set upon a thing, perhaps no woman living was more persistently obstinate in having her own way than Mrs. Smith—and that’s saying a great deal, you know. The lawyer was not the first man who has had to yield, against his better judgment, to a woman’s will; and at eleven o’clock, for the magistrates met late that day, he accompanied her to the court, and requested a private hearing. Their worships granted it, and proceeded to business with closed doors.

Meanwhile Mr. Carlton was going his morning rounds, and chatting amicably with his patients, in complete ignorance of the web that others were tightening round him, utterly unconscious that even then a plot built up by his enemies had begun its operation. Oh, if some pitying spirit would but warn us of our peril, in these hours of danger! Could not one of those, that are said to rap at our tables, come and rap its warning message at our brains? They’d do some good then.

No friendly spirit rapped at Mr. Carlton’s. He paid his visits, driving from one house to another, and returned home rather earlier than usual. The sickness was abating in South Wennock as quickly as it had come on, and the medical men were, comparatively speaking, at leisure again. Mr. Carlton went into the surgery, looked in the visiting book, dotted down a few orders for medicines for Mr. Jefferson to make up when he came in, and at one o’clock went into the dining-room.

Lady Laura was there. It was the first day she had come down-stairs; that is, come regularly to her meals. She was just about to sit down to luncheon, and so very unusual a thing was it for her husband to come in to partake of that meal, that she looked at him in surprise.

“Ah, Laura! Down-stairs to luncheon again! I am glad of it, my dear.”

He spoke in a cheery, hearty, loving tone; very, very rarely did he speak in any other to his wife. The time was to come when Laura would remember those tones with remorse, and think how she had requited them.

“You are home early to-day,”' observed Laura, quitting the chair she had been about to take, and drawing nearer the fire while she talked.

“Earlier than I have been lately. Laura, I shall advertise the practice at once now.”

“Advertise the practice!”

“I am beginning to dislike this incessant work. And if I don’t make an effort some time we shall never get away. How early you went to bed last night!” continued Mr. Carlton, passing to a different topic.

“I was tired,” said Laura, evasively. In point of fact, she had not been tired the previous evening, but angry at Jane’s unexplained departure, and had gone to rest early.

“You are letting your luncheon get cold.”

Laura gave a side glance at the table and slightly tossed her head. She threw her eyes full at her husband as he stood opposite to her in the cross light of the front and side windows.

“So that child’s dead, I hear.”

“What child!” repeated Mr. Carlton, really not for the moment comprehending, for he was thinking of other things.

“As if you did not know! The child at Tupper’s cottage.”

“Oh yes; he died yesterday morning, poor little sufferer. The mother takes on dreadfully,” he added, after a pause.

“Will you affirm to me, now that he is lying dead, that the child was nothing to you? You know what I mean.”

“No,” returned Mr. Carlton with provoking coolness. “I answered you once on the point, and I thought you were satisfied. If you have been calling up the old fancies again, Laura, you must abide by it; I shall not allow them to trouble me.”

Thought she was satisfied! Little did Mr. Carlton suspect how far from “satisfied” she had been! What a turmoil of jealousy her mind had become since! Laura resumed.

“The mother ‘takes on,’ does she!”

‘She did yesterday morning. I was up there half-an-hour after the child’s death, and I think I never saw grief so passionate as hers was for the moment. I was astonished. But when these cold hard natures yield to emotion, it’s apt to be strong. I daresay it spent itself long before the day was over.”

“I suppose you soothed it for her.”

Mr. Carlton looked quickly at his wife: was she bringing up this absurdity again? “Laura?”

“Well?”

“What do you mean?”

Lady Laura’s pouting lips and flushed cheeks answered for her, and Mr. Carlton had no need to ask a second time. But the absurdity of the thing, as connected with Mrs. Smith, struck so ludicrously upon Mr. Carlton, that his whole face relaxed into an amused smile.

“Oh Laura! That hard old woman!”

Had he protested for an hour, it could not have opened her eyes to the real absurdity of her doubts more than did those simple words. She looked shyly up at him, her lip quivering. Mr. Carlton laid his hand fondly on her shoulder.

“Need I affirm it to you again, Laura?—that I never had any acquaintance with the woman, on my sacred word of honour. You cannot surely think it necessary that I should