"Good morning, Miss Blyth! glorious day, isn't it? going to sling a hammock? let me do it, won't you?"

Vesta Blyth looked at him with sombre eyes. "I couldn't hold it!" she said, unwillingly. "There is no strength left in my hands."

"You are still tired, you see," said Geoffrey, cheerfully, as he picked up the hammock. "That's perfectly natural."

"It isn't natural!" said the girl, fiercely. "It's devilish!"

"This is a good place," said Geoffrey, paying no attention to her.

"Combination of shade and sun, you see. Pillow at this end? There! how is that?"

"Thank you! it will do very well."

She stretched herself at full length in the hammock. Her movements were perfectly graceful, he noted; and he made a swift comparison with the way his cousins flounced or twittered or slumped into a hammock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock rope.]

He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock-rope. He was conscious only of a friendly feeling of compa.s.sion for this fair young creature, built for vigour and an active life, now condemned for months, it might be years, of weariness and pain. Whether any unconscious keenness of scrutiny crept into his eyes or not, is not known; but as Vesta Blyth looked up and met their gaze, a wave of angry crimson rushed over her face and neck.

"Doctor Strong," she said, violently, her voice low and vibrating, as some women's are in pa.s.sion, "I must request you _not_ to look at me!"

Geoffrey started, and coloured in his turn. "I beg your pardon!" he said. "I was not aware--I a.s.sure you I had no intention of being rude, Miss Blyth."

"You were not rude!" Vesta swept on. "I am rude; I am unreasonable, I am absurd. I can't help it. I will not be looked at professionally.

Half the people in this village would welcome your professional glance as a beam from heaven, and bask in it, and drop every symptom as if it were a pearl, but I am not a 'case.' I am simply a human being, who asks nothing but to be let alone."

She stopped abruptly, her bosom heaving, her eyes like black agates with fire behind them, looking straight past him at the trees beyond.

"If you wish to put me to the last humiliation," she added, hurriedly, "you may wait and have the satisfaction of seeing me cry; if not--"

But Geoffrey was gone, fleeing into the house with the sound of stormy sobs chasing him like Furies. He never stopped till he reached his own room, where he flung himself into his chair in most unprofessional agitation. The window was open--what a fool he was to leave windows open!--and the sound followed him; he could not shut it out. Dreadful sobs, choking, agonising; he felt, as if he saw it, the whole slender figure convulsed with them. Good heavens! the girl would be in convulsions if she went on at this rate.

Now the sobs died away into long moans, into quivering breaths; now they broke out again, insistent, terrible. Broken words among them, too.

"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"

Geoffrey, who had been trying to look over some papers, started up and paced the room hurriedly. "This--this is very curious!" he was trying to say to himself. "Hysteria pure and simple--very interesting--I must note the duration of the paroxysms. Good G.o.d! can't somebody stop her?

perfectly inhuman, to let a creature go on like that!"

He was at the door, with some vague idea of alarming the house, when a soft knock was heard on the other side. He flung the door open, and startled Miss Vesta so that she gave a little cry of dismay, and retreated to the head of the stairs. "Pray excuse me, Doctor Strong,"

she said. "I see that you are occupied; I pray you to excuse me!"

"No, no!" said Geoffrey, hurriedly. "I am not--it's nothing at all.

What can I do for you, Miss Vesta? Do come in, please!"

"My niece," said the little lady, with a troubled look, "is in a highly nervous condition to-day, Doctor Strong. She is--weeping. My sister thought you might have--" she paused, as Miss Phoebe's crisp and decided tones came up over the stairs.

"Little Vesta has got into a crying-spell, Doctor Strong. I want a little valerian for her, please. I will go down and give it to her myself, if you will hand it to my sister."

"In one moment, Miss Blyth," called Geoffrey, in his most composed and professional tones. Then, seizing Miss Vesta's hand, he almost dragged her into the room, and shut the door.

"Don't let her go!" he said, hurriedly, as he sought and poured out the valerian. "Take it yourself, please, Miss Vesta, please! Miss Blyth will--that is, she is less gentle than you; if your niece is in such a condition as--as you say, you are the one to soothe her. Will you go?

Please do."

"Dear Doctor Strong," said Miss Vesta, panting a little, "are you--I fear you are unwell yourself. You alarm me, my dear young friend."

"I am a brute," said Geoffrey; "a clumsy, unfeeling brute!" He kissed her little white wrinkled hand; then, still holding it, paused to listen. The voice came up again from the place of torture.

"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"

He pressed the gla.s.s in Miss Vesta's hand. "There! there! a teaspoonful at once, please; but you will be better than medicine. Tell Miss Blyth--tell her I want very much to speak to her, please! Ask if she could come up here now, this moment, just for two or three minutes. And you'll go down yourself, won't you, Miss Vesta--dear Miss Vesta?"

He was so absorbed in listening he did not hear the creaking of Miss Phoebe's morocco shoes on the stairs; and when she appeared before him, flushed and slightly out of breath, he stared at the good lady as if he had never seen her before.

"You wished to see me, Doctor Strong?" Miss Phoebe began. She was half pleased, half ruffled, at being summoned in this imperious way.

"Yes--oh, yes," answered Geoffrey, vaguely. "Come in, please, Miss Blyth. Won't you sit down--no, I wouldn't sit near the window, it's damp to-day (it was not in the least damp). Sit here, in my chair. Did you know there was a secret pocket in this chair? Very curious thing!"

"I was aware of it," said Miss Phoebe, with dignity. "Was that what you wished to say to me, Doctor Strong?"

"No--oh, no (thank Heaven, she has stopped! that angel is with her).

I--I am ashamed to trouble you, Miss Blyth, but you said you would be so very good as to look over my shirts some day, and see if they are worth putting on new collars and cuffs. It's really an imposition; any time will do, if you are busy now. I only thought, hearing your voice--"

"There is no time like the present," said Miss Phoebe, in her most gracious tone. "It will be a pleasure, I a.s.sure you, Doctor Strong, to look over any portions of your wardrobe, and give you such advice as I can. I always made my honoured father's shirts after my dear mother's death, so I am, perhaps, not wholly unfitted for this congenial task.

Ah, machine-made!"

"Beg pardon!" said Geoffrey, who had been listening to something else.

"These shirts were made with the aid of the sewing-machine, I perceive," said Miss Phoebe. "No--oh, no, it is nothing unusual. Very few persons, I believe, make shirts entirely by hand in these days. I always set the same number of st.i.tches in my father's shirts, five thousand and sixty. He always said that no machine larger than a cambric needle should touch his linen."

"Then--you don't think they are worth new collars?" said Geoffrey, abstractedly.

"Did I convey that impression?" said Miss Phoebe, with mild surprise.

"I had no such intention, Doctor Strong. I think that a skilful person, with some knowledge of needlework, could make these garments (though machine-made) last some months yet. You see, Doctor Strong, if she takes this--"

It was a neat and well-sustained little oration that Miss Phoebe delivered, emphasising her remarks with the cuff of a shirt; but it was lost on Geoffrey Strong. He was listening to another voice that came quavering up from the garden below, a sweet high voice, like a wavering thread of silver. No more sobs; and Miss Vesta was singing; the sweetest song, Geoffrey thought, that he had ever heard.

CHAPTER VI.

INFORMATION

The next day and the next Geoffrey avoided the garden as if it were a haunt of cobras. The dining-room, too, was a place of terror to him, and at each meal he paused before entering the room, nerving himself for what he might have to face. This was wholly unreasonable, he told himself repeatedly; it was ridiculous; it was--the young man was not one to spare himself--it was unprofessional.

"Oh, yes, I know all that," he replied; "but they shouldn't cry. There ought to be a law against their crying."

Here it occurred to him that he had seen his cousins cry many times, and had never minded it; but that was entirely different, he said.