yet.
His face hardened. 'There seems to be something like bearing malice in this,' he said. 'Are you treating me, for the first time, to an exhibition of enmity? What am I to call it, if it's not that?'
'Call it disappointment,' she suggested quietly, and left him.
Lord Harry went back to his breakfast. His jealousy was up in arms again. 'She's comparing me with her absent friend,' he said to himself, 'and wishing she had married the amiable Mountjoy instead of me.'
So the first quarrel ended—and Mr. Vimpany had been the cause of it.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
ICI ON PARLE FRANCAIS
THE doctor arrived in good time for dinner, and shook hands with the Irish lord in excellent spirits.
He looked round the room, and asked where my lady was. Lord Harry's reply suggested the presence of a cloud on the domestic horizon. He had been taking a long ride, and had only returned a few minutes since; Iris would (as he supposed) join them immediately.
The maid put the soup on the table, and delivered a message. Her mistress was suffering from a headache, and was not well enough to dine with the gentlemen.
As an old married man, Mr. Vimpany knew what this meant; he begged leave to send a comforting message to the suffering lady of the house. Would Fanny be good enough to say that he had made inquiries on the subject of Mr. Mountjoy's health, before he left London. The report was still favourable; there was nothing to complain of but the after-weakness which had followed the fever. On that account only, the attendance of the nurse was still a matter of necessity. 'With my respects to Lady Harry,' he called after Fanny, as she went out in dogged silence.
'I have begun by making myself agreeable to your wife,' the doctor remarked with a self-approving grin. 'Perhaps she will dine with us to-morrow. Pass the sherry.'
The remembrance of what had happened at the breakfast-table, that morning, seemed to be dwelling disagreeably on Lord Harry's mind. He said but little—and that little related to the subject on which he had already written, at full length, to his medical friend.
In an interval, when the service of the table required the attendance of Fanny in the kitchen, Mr. Vimpany took the opportunity of saying a few cheering words. He had come (he remarked) prepared with the right sort of remedy for an ailing state of mind, and he would explain himself at a fitter opportunity. Lord Harry impatiently asked why the explanation was deferred. If the presence of the maid was the obstacle which caused delay, it would be easy to tell her that she was not wanted to wait.
The wary doctor positively forbade this.
He had observed Fanny, during his previous visit, and had discovered that she seemed to distrust him. The woman was sly and suspicious. Since they had sat down to dinner, it was easy to see that she was lingering in the room to listen to the conversation, on one pretence or another. If she was told not to wait, there could be no doubt of her next proceeding: she would listen outside the door. 'Take my word for it,' the doctor concluded, 'there are all the materials for a spy in Fanny Mere.'
But Lord Harry was obstinate. Chafing under the sense of his helpless pecuniary position, he was determined to hear, at once, what remedy for it Vimpany had discovered.
'We can set that woman's curiosity at defiance,' he said.
'How?'
'When you were learning your profession, you lived in Paris for some years, didn't you?
'All right!'
'Well, then, you can't have entirely forgotten your French?'
The doctor at once understood what this meant, and answered significantly by a wink. He had found an opportunity (he said) of testing his memory, not very long since. Time had undoubtedly deprived him of his early mastery over the French language; but he could still (allowing for a few mistakes) make a shift to understand it and speak it. There was one thing, however, that he wanted to know first. Could they be sure that my lady's maid had not picked up French enough to use her ears to some purpose? Lord Harry easily disposed of this doubt. So entirely ignorant was the maid of the language of the place in which she was living, that she was not able to ask the tradespeople for the simplest article of household use, unless it was written for her in French before she was sent on an errand.
This was conclusive. When Fanny returned to the dining-room, she found a surprise waiting for her. The two gentlemen had taken leave of their nationality, and were talking the language of foreigners.
An hour later, when the dinner-table had been cleared, the maid's domestic duties took her to Lady Harry's room to make tea. She noticed the sad careworn look on her mistress's face, and spoke of it at once in her own downright way.
'I thought it was only an excuse,' she said, 'when you gave me that message to the gentlemen, at dinner-time. Are you really ill, my lady?'
'I am a little out of spirits,' Iris replied.
Fanny made the tea. 'I can understand that,' she said to herself, as she moved away to leave the room; 'I'm out of spirits myself.'
Iris called her back: 'I heard you say just now, Fanny, that you were out of spirits yourself. If you were speaking of some troubles of your own, I am sorry for you, and I won't say any more. But if you know what my anxieties are, and share them—'
'Mine is the biggest share of the two,' Fanny broke out abruptly. 'It goes against the grain with me to distress you, my lady; but we are beginning badly, and you ought to know it. The doctor has beaten me already.'
'Beaten you already?' Iris repeated. 'Tell me plainly what you mean?'
'Here it is, if you please, as plainly as words can say it. Mr. Vimpany has something—something wicked, of course—to say to my master; and he won't let it pass his lips here, in the cottage.'
