And then, on this very day, Lady Staveley had discovered that Felix Graham’s door in the corridor was habitually left open. She knew her child too well, and was too clear and pure in her own mind, to suppose that there was anything wrong in this;—that clandestine talkings were arranged, or anything planned in secret. What she feared was that which really occurred. The door was left open, and as Madeline passed Felix would say a word, and then Madeline would pause and answer him. Such words as they were might have been spoken before all the household, and if so spoken would have been free from danger. But they were not free from danger when spoken in that way, in the passage of a half-closed doorway;—all which Lady Staveley understood perfectly.
“Baker,” she had said, with more of anger in her voice than was usual with her, “why do you leave that door open?”
“I think it sweetens the room, my lady;” and, indeed, Felix Graham sometimes thought so too.
“Nonsense; every sound in the house must be heard. Keep it shut, if you please.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Mrs. Baker—who also understood perfectly.
“He is better, my darling,” said Mrs. Baker to Madeline, the same day; “and, indeed, for that he is well enough as regards eating and drinking. But it would be cruelty to move him yet. I heard what the doctor said.”
“Who talks of moving him?”
“Well, he talks of it himself; and the doctor said it might be possible. But I know what that means.”
“What does it mean?”
“Why, just this: that if we want to get rid of him, it won’t quite be the death of him.”
“But who wants to get rid of him?”
“I’m sure I don’t. I don’t mind my trouble the least in life. He’s as nice a young gentleman as ever I sat beside the bed of; and he’s full of spirit—he is.”
And then Madeline appealed to her mother. Surely her mother would not let Mr. Graham be sent out of the house in his present state, merely because the doctor said it might be possible to move him without causing his instant death! And tears stood in poor Madeline’s eyes as she thus pleaded the cause of the sick and wounded. This again tormented Lady Staveley, who found it necessary to give further caution to Mrs. Baker. “Baker,” she said, “how can you be so foolish as to be talking to Miss Madeline about Mr. Graham’s arm?”
“Who, my lady? I, my lady?”
“Yes, you; when you know that the least thing frightens her. Don’t you remember how ill it made her when Roger”—Roger was an old family groom—“when Roger had that accident?” Lady Staveley might have saved herself the trouble of the reminiscence as to Roger, for Baker knew more about it than that. When Roger’s scalp had been laid bare by a fall, Miss Madeline had chanced to see it, and had fainted; but Miss Madeline was not fainting now. Baker knew all about it, almost better than Lady Staveley herself. It was of very little use talking to Baker about Roger the groom. Baker thought that Mr. Felix Graham was a very nice young man, in spite of his “not being exactly handsomelike about the physgognomy,” as she remarked to one of the younger maids, who much preferred Peregrine Orme.
Coming away from this last interval with Mrs. Baker, Lady Staveley interrupted her son and Sophia Furnival in the back drawing-room, and began to feel that her solicitude for her children would be almost too much for her. Why had she asked that nasty girl to her house, and why would not the nasty girl go away? As for her going away, there was no present hope; for it had been arranged that she should stay for another fortnight. Why could not the Fates have been kind, and have allowed Felix Graham and Miss Furnival to fall in love with each other? “I can never make a daughter of her if he does marry her,” Lady Staveley said to herself, as she looked at them.
Augustus looked as though he were detected, and stammered out some question about his mother and the carriage; but Miss Furnival did not for a moment lose her easy presence of mind. “Lady Staveley,” said she, “why does not your son go and hunt, or shoot, or fish, instead of staying in the house all day? It seems to me that his time is so heavy on his hands that he will almost have to hang himself.”
“I’m sure I can’t tell,” said Lady Staveley, who was not so perfect an actor as her guest.
“I do think gentlemen in the house in the morning always look so unfortunate. You have been endeavouring to make yourself agreeable, but you know you’ve been yawning.”
“Do you suppose then that men never sit still in the morning?” said Augustus.
“Oh, in their chambers, yes; or on the bench, and perhaps also behind counters; but they very seldom do so in a drawing-room. You have been fidgeting
