By the sad sea waves Mrs. Mortomley thought those last words over and over and over. She put two and two together. She estimated the amount the interest her own modest fortune brought back to the common fund, and then she reckoned as well as a woman who never professed to keep any accounts could reckon, the total of their annual expenditure.

The result was that when her husband did come down and ask her in his usual fashion, if she wanted money, (for indeed he was as much gratified as surprised at having heard no mention of that one thing needful in her short notes), she opened her purse and turned out its contents gleefully.

"Haven't I been good?" she asked; and then went on to ask,

"Archie, have you really and truly been troubled about these things?"

"A little," he answered.

"Then why did you not tell me sooner?"

"Why should I trouble you about such matters, love?"

"Because till I married you, the want of money and I were close acquaintances; perhaps that is the reason why I have always hated considering money since, but I can consider for all that, and I intend to make what you hold in your hand last until I get home again."

He put the notes and gold back into her purse slowly and thoughtfully, folding each note by itself, with nervous absent carefulness, dropping each sovereign singly into the little netted bag she kept, with her childish love for pretty things, for them.

"My poor Dolly," he said at last. Was it a prevision? Knowledge _could not_ have come to him then, and it must have been a prevision that made the souls of both husband and wife grow for some reason, inexplicable to themselves, sad and sorrowful for a moment.

As for Dolly, his three words had sent her eyes out seaward with tears welling in them; but she was the first to recover herself.

"We will spoil our pleasure by talking of horrid money matters at the sea side," she remarked, "but when I go home again you must give me a full, true, and particular account of all that is troubling you. Do you hear, sir."

"Yes; I hear," he answered, "and I can give you an account of what is troubling me, at once. I have been foolish and I am suffering for my folly. I did not consider the crop I was planting and I am among stinging nettles in consequence; but we shall 'win through it yet,' to quote an old saying, dear, 'we shall win through it yet,' please God."

"I wish I was at home again," she said.

"So do I love, but you must not think of returning till you are quite strong and well again."

"No," she answered; "I think a sick wife is as bad in a house as a scolding wife, or worse, because at least the latter cannot excite anxiety, although it _was_ only Miss Dean made me ill."

Mortomley shook his head, "Never mind what made you ill, dear, so as you only get well," he answered, and then, for the twilight had closed upon them and the place was empty of visitors, they paced slowly back along that walk by the sea hand clasped in hand.

If--nine years husband though he was--he had known more of Dolly, possessed much insight into the windings and subtleties of any woman's nature, it would have struck him as curious that after the confidence given, his wife did not at once pack up her dresses and return to Homewood. Happily for him he did not understand her, did not comprehend the light words she had spoken apparently in jest were uttered in real earnest.

"A sick wife,"--Dolly's imagination could present even to itself few more terrible pictures than that, and she knew and some one else knew it was needful for her to take practical measures to avert so fearful a misfortune.

With the solemn old doctor Dolly had jested about her illness, had laughed at advice, had grudgingly consented to take his medicine. It was all very pleasant, very easy, very non-alarming. Even Mortomley was satisfied when the old simpleton with a wise face assured him all his wife wanted was a month at the sea-side and entire repose.

Dolly knew better. With no flourish of trumpets, saying nothing to any-body, she went off quietly by herself to a celebrated physician and told him about that little swoon.

He did not say much, indeed he did not say anything at first; then he asked carelessly, almost indifferently, as was his fashion,

"And what do you suppose made you faint." Mrs. Mortomley did not answer, she looked him straight in the face, as women sometimes can look, evil and danger.

There ensued a dead silence, then she said,

"I came here expecting you to tell me the cause."

"I will answer your question hereafter, and write you a prescription meantime," he answered confusedly.

"Neither is necessary at present," she replied, and laying down her guinea left the room before he could recover from his astonishment.

"Now I should like to know the future of that woman," he said, "She understands all about it as well as I do."

Perhaps she did, but then she possessed a marvellous buoyancy of temper, and disbelief in the infallibility of doctors.

Fortunately for her, and somebody else.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM.

"DEAR AUNT,--(thus Mrs. Mortomley to Miss Gerace)--I have been a little ill, and I am here by the doctor's advice for change of air and scene; but I find that the moaning of the sea and the howling of the wind depress me at night, and I think I should get well quicker if I were at Dassell in my own old room.

"May I go to you--will you have me? Lenore is with me at present, but I will not trouble you with her. She shall go back to her papa at Homewood, if you say you have a corner still in your house for your affectionate niece,

"DOLLY."

It is no exaggeration to say Mrs. Mortomley waited with a sickening impatience for the answer which should justify her in starting forthwith for Dassell. She believed she should get well there at once. She longed to hear the solemn silence of the woods; to behold once more the familiar landscape; to run over to the Court, and talk to Mrs.

Trebasson; in her matronhood, to stop for a moment and rehabilitate the beauty of her girlish life--where it had once been a breathing presence.

Perhaps in the new notion of economy which possessed her, she desired to be strengthened in her purpose by a glimpse of the land where she had been content with so little of the world's wealth. Anyhow, let the reason be what it might, Dolly wanted to go back home--as she mentally phrased it--and waited anxiously for Miss Gerace's letter. It came: it ran as follows:--

"MY DEAR NIECE,--I grieve to hear of your ill-health, although I cannot marvel you have broken down at last; you know my opinions.

They may be old fashioned; but, at all events, they carry with them the weight of an experience longer and wiser than my own.

"Health and undue excitement are incompatible. You left me blessed with a strong constitution; you have ruined it. You were a robust girl; you are a delicate woman. But I refrain, aware that my remarks now must be as distasteful as my previous advice has proved.

"When you were married I told you my home, so long as I had one, should always be yours. Though you have changed, I have not--and therefore, if you really think this air and place likely to benefit so _fashionable a lady as yourself_--pray come to me at once.

"Do not send your little girl back to Homewood, because you fear her giving trouble to a fidgety old maid. If you remember, I was not in my first youth when I took sole charge of you; and if I failed to train you into a perfect character, I do not think the blame could be laid altogether at my door. _But_ I will have none of your fly-away, fine-lady servants, remember that. You and the child are welcome; but there is no place in my small house for London maids or nurses.

"I hope you will take what I have written in the spirit in which it is meant, and

"Believe me, "Your affectionate Aunt, "M. GERACE."

To which epistle, Dolly, in an ecstasy of indignation, replied:--

"MY DEAR AUNT,--(from which commencement Miss Gerace anticipated stormy weather to follow; 'my' as a prefix to 'dear,' having always with Dolly been a declaration of hostility)--Of course I cannot tell in what spirit your letter was written, but I should say in a very bad one. At all events, I cannot go to Dassell now, and I regret asking you to have me. I will not visit any one who gives me a grudging welcome.

"I am not a fashionable lady. I am not a delicate woman. If being 'perfect' includes the power of saying disagreeable things to unoffending people, I am very thankful to admit I am, spite of your judicious training, an imperfect character. I suppose you have been waiting your opportunity to say something unpleasant to me, because Mrs. Edward Gerace spent a week with us in the Summer. I do not like her or her husband; but when they offered to visit us, we could not very well say there were plenty of Hotels within their means in London.

"And when they did come, I admit we tried to make them comfortable, which, no doubt assumes in your eyes the proportions of a sin. I daresay Edward Gerace's father did not treat my father well; but Edward is not responsible for that. For my part, I think in family feuds there ought to be a statute of limitations, as I believe there is for debt; nothing more fatiguing can be imagined, than to go on acting the Montague and Capulet business through all the days of one's life. If you had written to propose visiting me, I should have returned a very different answer; but I suppose people cannot help their dispositions. More is the pity!