Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/57

Rh hisself ill, he send for Doctor Owen, and since den he don't care for Dr. Lelever no more at all."

"I ought to be getting off," emarkedremarked [sic] Mrs. Poidevin, remembering the hour at which the omnibus left Vauvert; "had I better go up and bid cousin Louis good-bye?"

Mrs. Tourtel thought Margot should go and ask the Doctor's opinion first, but as Margot had already vanished, she went herself.

There was a longish pause, during which Mrs. Poidevin looked uneasily at Tourtel; he with restless furtive eyes at her. Then the housekeeper reappeared, noiseless, cool, determined as ever.

"Mr. Rennuf is quiet now," she said; "de Doctor have given him a soothing draught, and will stay to see how it acts. He tinks you'd better slip quietly away."

On this, Louisa Poidevin left Les Calais; but in spite of her easy superficiality, her unreasoning optimism, she took with her a sense of oppression. Cousin Louis's appeal rang in her ears: "Do not leave me; stay with me, or take me back with you. I am afraid up here, quite alone." And after all, though his fears were but the folly of old age, why, she asked herself, should he not come and stay with them in town if he wished to do so? She resolved to talk it over with Pedvinn; she thought she would arrange for him the little west room, being the furthest from the nurseries; and in planning out such vastly important trifles as to which easy-chair and which bedroom candlestick she would devote to his use, she forgot the old man himself and recovered her usual stolid jocundity.

When Owen had entered the bedroom, he had found Renouf standing over an open portmanteau, into which he was placing hurriedly whatever caught his eye or took his fancy, from the surrounding tables. His hand trembled from eagerness, his pale Rh