His lordship spoke with extreme feeling and kindness. But poor Lady Glyde's nerves were so completely broken down that she seemed quite frightened at him. She trembled from head to foot, and allowed him to take his leave without uttering a word on her side. She turned to me when he had gone, and said, ‘Oh, Mrs Michelson, I am heart-broken about my sister, and I have no friend to advise me! Do you think Mr Dawson is wrong? He told me himself this morning that there was no fear, and no need to send for another doctor.'
‘With all respect to Mr Dawson, I answered, ‘in your ladyship's place I should remember the Count's advice.'
Lady Glyde turned away from me suddenly, with an appearance of despair, for which I was quite unable to account.
‘His advice!' she said to herself. ‘God help us -- his advice!'
The Count was away from Blackwater Park, as nearly as I remember, a week.
Sir Percival seemed to feel the loss of his lordship in various ways, and appeared also, I thought, much depressed and altered by the sickness and sorrow in the house. Occasionally he was so very restless that I could not help noticing it, coming and going, and wandering here and there and everywhere in the grounds. His inquiries about Miss Halcombe, and about his lady (whose failing health seemed to cause him sincere anxiety), were most attentive. I think his heart was much softened. If some kind clerical friend -- some such friend as he might have found in my late excellent husband -- had been near him at this time, cheering moral progress might have been made with Sir Percival. I seldom find myself mistaken on a point of this sort, having had experience to guide me in my happy married days.
Her ladyship the Countess, who was now the only company for Sir Percival downstairs, rather neglected him, as I considered -- or, perhaps, it might have been that he neglected her. A stranger might almost have supposed that they were bent, now they were left together alone, on actually avoiding one another. This, of course, could not be. But it did so happen, nevertheless, that the Countess made her dinner at luncheon-time, and that she always came upstairs towards evening, although Mrs Rubelle had taken the nursing duties entirely off her hands. Sir Percival dined by himself, and William (the man out of livery), made the remark, in my hearing, that his master had put himself on half rations of food and on a double allowance of drink.
I attach no importance to such an insolent observation as this on the part of a servant. I reprobated it at the time, and I wish to be understood as reprobating it once more on this occasion.
In the course of the next few days Miss Halcombe did certainly seem to all of us to be mending a little. Our faith in Mr Dawson revived. He appeared to be very confident about the case, and he assured Lady Glyde, when she spoke to him on the subject, that he would himself propose to send for a physician the moment he felt so much as the shadow of a doubt crossing his own mind.
The only person among us who did not appear to be relieved by these words was the Countess. She said to me privately, that she could not feel easy about Miss Halcombe on Mr Dawson's authority, and that she should wait anxiously for her husband's opinion on his return. That return, his letters informed her, would take place in three days' time. The Count and Countess corresponded regularly every morning during his lordship's absence.
They were in that respect, as in all others, a pattern to married people.
On the evening of the third day I noticed a change in Miss Halcombe, which caused me serious apprehension. Mrs Rubelle noticed it too. We said nothing on the subject to Lady Glyde, who was then lying asleep, completely overpowered by exhaustion, on the sofa in the sitting-room.
Mr Dawson did not Pay his evening visit till later than usual. As soon as he set eyes on his patient I saw his face alter. He tried to hide it, but he looked both confused and alarmed. A messenger was sent to his residence for his medicine-chest, disinfecting preparations were used in the room, and a bed was made up for him in the house by his own directions. ‘Has the fever turned to infection?' I whispered to him. ‘I am afraid it has,' he answered, ‘we shall know better tomorrow morning.'
By Mr Dawson's own directions Lady Glyde was kept in ignorance of this change for the worse. He himself absolutely forbade her, on account of her health, to join us in the bedroom that night. She tried to resist -- there was a sad scene -- but he had his medical authority to support him, and he carried his point.
The next morning one of the man-servants was sent to London at eleven o'clock, with a letter to a physician in town, and with orders to bring the new doctor back with him by the earliest possible train. Half an hour after the messenger had gone the Count returned to Blackwater Park.
The Countess, on her own responsibility, immediately brought him in to see the patient. There was no impropriety that I could discover in her taking this course. His lordship was a married man, he was old enough to be Miss Halcombe's father, and he saw her in the presence of a female relative, Lady Glyde's aunt. Mr Dawson nevertheless protested against his presence in the room, but I could plainly remark the doctor was too much alarmed to make any serious resistance on this occasion.
The poor suffering lady was past knowing any one about her. She seemed to take her friends for enemies. When the Count approached her bedside her eyes, which had been wandering incessantly round and round the root,: before, settled on his face with a dreadful stare of terror, which I shall remember to my dying day. The Count sat down by her, felt her pulse and her temples, looked at her very attentively, and then turned round upon the doctor with such an expression of indignation and contempt in his face, that the words failed on Mr Dawson's lips, and he stood for a moment, pale with anger and alarm -- pale and perfectly speechless.
His lordship looked next at me.
‘When did the change happen?' he asked.
