“You must be tired to death!” he said.

“No, not at all. I was asleep all the afternoon,” she returned, setting a small saucepan on the hob. “Like the Duke, I can sleep at any hour! Poor Cecy can never get a wink during the day, so we have decided that she must not attempt to sit up at night.”

“You mean that you have decided it,” he said.

She only smiled and shook her head. He said no more but sat watching her as she knelt by the fire, her attention on the milk slowly heating on the hob. After a few minutes, Amabel began to stir. Almost before her feeble, plaintive cry of “Sophy!” had been uttered, Sophy had risen to her feet and moved to the bedside. Amabel was hot, thirsty, uncomfortable, and disinclined to believe that anything could do her good. To be raised, so that her pillows could be shaken and turned, made her cry; she wanted Sophy to bathe her forehead, but complained that the lavender water stung her eyes when she did so.

“Hush, you will shock your visitor if you cry!” Sophy said, smoothing her tangled curls. “Do you know there is a gentleman come to see you?”

“Charles?” Amabel asked, forgetting her woes for a moment.

“Yes, Charles, so you must let me tidy you a little, and straighten the sheets. There! Now, Charles, Miss Rivenhall will be pleased to receive you!”

She moved the screen, so that the candlelight fell on the bed, and nodded to Charles to sit down beside his sister. He did so, holding the claw like little hand in his and talking to the child in a cheerful way that succeeded in diverting her until Sophy brought a cup of milk to the bedside. The sight of this at once made her peevish. She wanted nothing; it would make her sick to swallow any milk; why would not Sophy leave her in peace?

“I hope you don’t mean to be so unkind as to refuse it, when I have come especially to hold the cup for you,” Charles said, taking it from his cousin. “A cup with roses on it, too! Now, where had you this? I am sure I do not recognize it!”

“Cecilia gave it to me for my very own,” Amabel replied. “But I don’t wish for any milk. It is the middle of the night, not the proper time for drinking milk!”

“I hope Charles has admired your real roses,” said Sophy, sitting down on the edge of the bed and raising Amabel to rest against her shoulder. “We are so jealous, Charles, Cecy and I! Amabel has such a fine beau that we are cast quite into the shade. Only look at the bouquet he brought her!”

“Charlbury?” he said, smiling.

“Yes, but I like your posy best,” Amabel said. 

“Of course you do,” said Sophy. “So take a sip of the milk he is offering you. I must tell you that a gentleman’s feelings are very easily wounded, my dear, and that, you know, would never do!”

“Very true,” Charles corroborated. “I shall be thinking that you have a greater regard for Charlbury than for me, and that will very likely make me fall into a melancholy.”

That made her laugh weakly, and so, between nonsense and coaxing, she was persuaded to drink nearly all the milk. Sophy laid her gently down again, but nothing would do but that both Charles and Sophy should stay beside her.

“Yes, but no more talking,” Sophy said. “I am going to tell you about another of my adventures, and if you interrupt me I shall lose the thread.”

“Oh, yes, tell about the time you were lost in the Pyrenees!” begged Amabel drowsily.

Sophy did so, her voice sinking as the little girl’s eyelids began to droop. Mr. Rivenhall sat still and silent on the other side of the bed, watching his sister. Presently Amabel’s deeper breathing betrayed that she slept. Sophy’s voice ceased; she looked up and met Mr. Rivenhall’s eyes. He was staring at her, as though a thought, blinding in its novelty, had occurred to him. Her gaze remained steady, a little questioning. He rose abruptly, half stretched out his hand but let it fall again, and, turning, went quickly out of the room.

Chapter 15

UPON THE following day, Sophy did not encounter her cousin. He visited Amabel at an hour when he knew Sophy to be resting and was not at home to dinner. Lady Ombersley feared that something had occurred to vex him, for although his manner toward her was unfailingly patient, and he abated none of his solicitude for her comfort, his brow was clouded, and he replied to many of her remarks quite, at random. He submitted, however, to the penance of a hand at cribbage with her; and when the game was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Fawnhope, with a copy of his poem for Lady Ombersley and a posy of moss roses for Cecilia, he was sufficiently master of himself to greet the visitor, if not with enthusiasm, at least with civility.

Mr. Fawnhope, having written some thirty lines of his tragedy the previous day, with which he was not dissatisfied, was in a complaisant humor, neither chasing an elusive epithet nor brooding over an infelicitous line. He said everything that was proper, and, when all inquiries into the invalid’s condition were exhausted, conversed on various topics so much like a sensible man that Mr. Rivenhall himself quite in charity with him and was only driven from the room by Lady Ombersley’s request to the poet to read aloud to her his lyric on Amabel’s deliverance from danger. Even this abominable affectation could not wholly dissipate the kindlier feelings with which he regarded Mr. Fawnhope, whose continued visits to the house gave him a better opinion of the poet than was at all deserved. Cecilia could have told him that Mr. Fawnhope’s intrepidity sprang more from a sublime unconsciousness of the risk of infection than from any deliberate heroism, but since she was not in the habit of discussing her lover with her brother he continued in a happy state of ignorance, himself too practical a man to comprehend the density of the veil in which a poet could wrap himself.

He never again visited the sickroom at a moment when he might expect to find his cousin there, and when they met “at the dinner table, his manner toward her was so curt as to border on the brusque. Cecilia, knowing how very much obliged to Sophy he thought himself, was astonished, and more than once pressed her cousin to tell her whether they had quarreled. But Sophy would only shake her head and look mischievous.

Amabel continued to mend, although slowly, and with many setbacks and all the irrational fidgets of a convalescent. For twelve hours nothing would do for her but to have Jacko brought to her room. Only Sophy’s forcible representations prevented Mr. Rivenhall from posting down to Ombersley Court to bring back the indispensable monkey, so anxious was he that nothing should be allowed to retard his little sister’s recovery, But Tina, hitherto excluded, to her great indignation, from attendance on his mistress in the sickroom, made an excellent substitute for Jacko, and was only too content to curl up on the quilt under Amabel’s caressing hand.

At the beginning of the fourth week of the illness. Dr. Baillie began to talk of the propriety of removing his patient into the country. But here he encountered an unexpected and obstinate opposition from Lady Ombersley. He had once mentioned to her the possibility of a relapse, and this had taken such strong possession of her mind that no inducement could serve to make her consent to Amabel’s going out of reach of his expert care. She represented to him the unwisdom of restoring Amabel to the society of her sisters and her noisy brother soon to be enjoying his summer holiday at Ombersley. The little girl was still languid, disinclined for any exertion, and wincing at sudden sounds. She would do better in London, under his eye, and in the fond care of her mama. Now that all danger was past, Lady Ombersley’s maternal instinct could assert itself. She, and she alone, should bear the charge of her youngest daughter’s convalescence. In the event, to lie upon the sofa in Mama’s dressing room, to drive sedately out with her in the barouche, just suited Amabel’s present humor, and so it was settled, both Cecilia and Sophy disclaiming any desire to leave London for the country.

Town was very thin of company, but the weather was not so sultry as to make the streets disagreeable. The month was showery, and few were the days when even the most modish young lady cared to venture forth without a pelisse or a shawl.

Others besides the Ombersley family had chosen to remain in town until August. Lord Charlbury was still to be found in Mount Street;’ Mr. Fawnhope in his rooms off St. James’s; Lord Bromford, deaf to the entreaties of his mother, refused to retire into Kent; and the Brinklows found several excellent excuses for remaining in Brook Street. As soon as all danger of infection was over, Miss Wraxton was once more to be seen in Berkeley Square, gracious to everyone, even caressing toward Lady Ombersley and Amabel, and very full of wedding schemes. Mr. Rivenhall found pressing business to attend to on his own estates; and if Miss Wraxton chose to assume that his frequent absences from town were accounted for by his desire to set his house in order for her reception, she was quite at liberty to do so.

Cecilia, less robust than her cousin, did not recover so quickly from the anxiety and exertion of her four weeks’ incarceration. She was a good deal pulled down and had lost a little of her bloom. She was rather silent, too, a fact that did not escape her brother’s eye. He taxed her with it; and, when she returned an evasive answer, and would have left the room, detained her, saying, “Don’t go, Cilly!”

She waited, looking inquiringly at him. After a moment, he asked abruptly, “Are you unhappy?”

Her color rose, and her lips trembled in spite of herself. She made a protesting gesture, turning away her face, for it was impossible to explain to him the turmoil raging in her own heart.

To her surprise, he took her hand and pressed it, saying awkwardly, but in a softened tone, “I never meant you to be unhappy. I did not think — You are such a good girl, Cilly. I suppose, if your poet will but engage on some respectable profession, I must withdraw my opposition and let you have your way.”

Amazement held her motionless, only her startled eyes flying to his face. She allowed her hand to lie in his, until he released it and turned away, as though he did not choose to meet her wide gaze.

“You thought me cruel — unfeeling! No doubt I must have seemed so, but I have never desired anything but your happiness. I cannot be glad of your choice, but if your mind is made up, God forbid I should have any hand in parting you from one whom you sincerely love, or in promoting your marriage to a man you cannot care for!”

“Charles!” she uttered faintly.

He said over his shoulder, and with some difficulty, “I have come to see that nothing but misery could result from such a union. You at least shall not be subjected to a lifetime of regret! I will speak to my father. You have resented my influence with him. This time it shall be exerted in your favor.”

At any other moment his words must have prompted her to have inquired into their unexpressed significance, but shock seemed to suspend her every faculty. She found not a word to say, and experienced the greatest difficulty in preventing herself from bursting into tears. He turned his head, and said, with a smile, “What an ogre I must appear to you, to have so taken your breath away, Cilly! Don’t stare at me so unbelievingly! You shall marry your poet; my hand on it!”

She put out her own mechanically, managed to speak two words, “Thank you!” and ran out of the room, unable to say more, or to control her emotion.

She sought the seclusion of her own bedchamber, her thoughts in such disorder that it was long before her agitation had at all subsided.

Never had opposition been withdrawn at so inopportune a moment; never had a victory seemed more empty! Almost without her knowledge, her sentiments, during the “past weeks, had been undergoing a change. Now that her brother had accorded her his permission to marry the man of her choice, she discovered that her feeling for Augustus had been more than the infatuation Charles had always thought it. Opposition had fostered it, leading her into the fatal error of almost publicly announcing her unalterable determination to marry Augustus or no one. Lord Charlbury, so superior to Augustus in every way, had accepted her rejection of his suit and had turned his attention elsewhere; and whatever unacknowledged hope she might have cherished of seeing his affections reanimate toward her must now be quite at an end. To confess to Charles that he had been right from the start, and she most miserably mistaken, was impossible. She had gone too far; nothing now remained to her but to accept the fate she had insisted on bringing on herself; and, for pride’s sake, to show a smiling face to the world.