Lady Busshe made a stir.
"I cannot keep my horses waiting any longer," she said, and beckoned. Sir Willoughby was beside her immediately.
"You are admirable! perfect! Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I retract, I recant. It is a fatality. I have resolved upon that view. You could stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is our report. There! And it's delicious to feel that the county wins you. No tea. I cannot possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must have a look at her. My dear Laetitia Dale!"
Willoughby hurried to Mr. Dale.
"You are not to be excited, sir: compose yourself. You will recover and be strong to-morrow: you are at home; you are in your own house; you are in Laetitia's drawing-room. All will be clear to-morrow. Till to-morrow we talk riddles by consent. Sit, I beg.
You stay with us."
He met Laetitia and rescued her from Lady Busshe, murmuring, with the air of a lover who says, "my love! my sweet!" that she had done rightly to come and come at once. Her father had been thrown into the proper condition of clammy nervousness to create the impression. Laetitia's anxiety sat prettily on her long eyelashes as she bent over him in his chair.
Hereupon Dr. Corney appeared; and his name had a bracing effect on Mr. Dale. "Corney has come to drive me to the cottage," he said.
"I am ashamed of this public exhibition of myself, my dear. Let us go. My head is a poor one."
Dr. Corney had been intercepted. He broke from Sir Willoughby with a dozen little nods of accurate understanding of him, even to beyond the mark of the communications. He touched his patient's pulse lightly, briefly sighed with professional composure, and pronounced: "Rest. Must not be moved. No, no, nothing serious," he quieted Laetitia's fears, "but rest, rest. A change of residence for a night will tone him. I will bring him a draught in the course of the evening. Yes, yes, I'll fetch everything wanted from the cottage for you and for him. Repose on Corney's forethought."
"You are sure, Dr. Corney?" said Laetitia, frightened on her father's account and on her own.
"Which aspect will be the best for Mr. Dale's bedroom?" the hospitable ladies Eleanor and Isabel inquired.
"Southeast, decidedly: let him have the morning sun: a warm air, a vigorous air, and a bright air, and the patient wakes and sings in his bed."
Still doubtful whether she was in a trap, Laetitia whispered to her father of the privacy and comforts of his home. He replied to her that he thought he would rather be in his own home.
Dr Corney positively pronounced No to it.
Laetitia breathed again of home, but with the sigh of one overborne.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel took the word from Willoughby, and said: "But you are at home, my dear. This is your home. Your father will be at least as well attended here as at the cottage."
She raised her eyelids on them mournfully, and by chance diverted her look to Dr. Middleton, quite by chance.
It spoke eloquently to the assembly of all that Willoughby desired to be imagined.
"But there is Crossjay," she cried. "My cousin has gone, and the boy is left alone. I cannot have him left alone. If we, if, Dr.
Corney, you are sure it is unsafe for papa to be moved to-day, Crossjay must ... he cannot be left."
"Bring him with you, Corney," said Sir Willoughby; and the little doctor heartily promised that he would, in the event of his finding Crossjay at the cottage, which he thought a distant probability.
"He gave me his word he would not go out till my return," said Laetitia.
"And if Crossjay gave you his word," the accents of a new voice vibrated close by, "be certain that he will not come back with Dr.
Corney unless he has authority in your handwriting."
Clara Middleton stepped gently to Laetitia, and with a manner that was an embrace, as much as kissed her for what she was doing on behalf of Crossjay. She put her lips in a pouting form to simulate saying: "Press it."
"He is to come," said Laetitia.
"Then write him his permit."
There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his post that he could be, during which Laetitia distressfully scribbled a line for Dr. Corney to deliver to him. Clara stood near. She had rebuked herself for want of reserve in the presence of Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly excessive containment when she next addressed Laetitia. It was, like Laetitia's look at Dr. Middleton, opportune: enough to make a man who watched as Willoughby did a fatalist for life: the shadow of a difference in her bearing toward Laetitia sufficed to impute acting either to her present coolness or her previous warmth.
