CHAPTER XIX.

TELEGRAPHING FOR A PHYSICIAN.

Some uncomfortable days passed on. Uncomfortable in one sense. Heaven knows I was happy enough, for the society of Mr. Chandos had become all too dear, and in it I was basking away the golden hours. Looking back now I cannot sufficiently blame myself. Not for staying at Chandos; I could not help that; but for allowing my heart to yield unresistingly to the love. How could I suppose it would end? Alas! that was what I never so much as thought of: the present was becoming too much of an Elysium for me to look questioning beyond it; it was as a very haven of sweet and happy rest.

With some of the other inmates, things seemed to be anything but easy. Lady Chandos was still invisible; and, by what I could gather, growing daily worse. Mr. Chandos, his lameness better, looked bowed down with a weight of apprehensive care. Hill was in a state of fume and fret; and the women-servants, meeting in odd corners, spoke whisperingly of the figure that nightly haunted Chandos.

What astonished me more than anything was, that no medical man was called in to Lady Chandos. Quite unintentionally, without being able to help myself, I overheard a few words spoken between Hill and Mr. Chandos. That Lady Chandos was dangerously ill, and medical aid an absolute necessity, appeared indisputable; and yet it seemed they did not dare to summon it. It was a riddle unfathomable. The surgeon from Hetton, Mr. Dickenson, came still to Mr. Chandos every day. What would have been easier than for him to go up to Lady Chandos? He never did, however; he was not asked to do so. Day after day he would say, "How is Lady Chandos?" and Mr. Chandos's reply would be, "Much the same."

The omission also struck on Mrs. Penn. One day, when she had come into my chamber uninvited, she spoke of it abruptly, looking full in my face, in her keen way.

"How is it they don't have a doctor to her?"

"What is the use of asking me, Mrs. Penn? I cannot tell why they don't."

"Do you never hear Mr. Chandos say why?"

"Never. At the beginning of her illness, he said his mother knew how to treat herself, and that she had a dislike to doctors."

"There's more in it than that, I think," returned Mrs. Penn, in a tone of significance. "That surly Hill wont answer a single question. All I get out of her is, 'My lady's no better.' Mrs. Chandos goes into the west wing most days, but she is as close as Hill. The fact is—it is very unfortunate, but Mrs. Chandos appears to have taken a dislike to me."

"Taken a dislike to you!"

Mrs. Penn nodded. "And not a word upon any subject, save the merest conversational trifles, will she speak. But I have my own opinion of Lady Chandos's illness: if I am right, their reticence is accounted for."

Again the tone was so significant that I could but note it, and looked to her for an explanation. She dropped her voice as she gave it.

"I think that the malady which has attacked Lady Chandos is not bodily, but mental; and that they, in consequence, keep her in seclusion. Poor woman! She has had enough trouble to drive her mad."

"Oh, Mrs. Penn! Mad!"

"I mean what I say."

"But did you not have an interview with her when you came?"

"Yes, a short one. Harry Chandos was sitting with her, and went out, after a few words to me, staying in the next room. It seemed to me that she was impatient to have him back again: any way, she cut the meeting very short. I am bound to say that she appeared collected then."

Mrs. Penn lifted her hand, glittering with rings, to her brow as she spoke, and pushed slightly back her glowing hair. Her face looked troubled—that kind of trouble that arises from perplexity.

"Allowing it to be as you fancy, Mrs. Penn, they would surely have a doctor to her. Any medical man, if requested, would keep the secret."

"Ah! it's not altogether that, I expect," returned Mrs. Penn, with a curious look. "You would keep it, and I would keep it, as inmates of the family; and yet you see how jealously we are excluded. I suspect the true motive is, that they dare not risk the revelations she might make."

"What revelations?"

"You do not, perhaps, know it, Miss Hereford, but there is a sword hanging over the Chandos family," she continued, dropping her voice to a whisper. "An awful sword. It is suspended by a hair; and a chance word of betrayal might cause it to fall. Of that chance word the Chandoses live in dread. Lady Chandos, if she be really insane, might inadvertently speak it."

"Over which of them?" I exclaimed, in dismay.

"I had rather not tell you which. It lies over them all, so to say. It is that, beyond question, which keeps Sir Thomas in India: when the blow comes, he can battle with it better there than at home. They lie under enough disgrace as it is: they will lie under far greater then."

"They appear to be just those quiet, unpretending, honourable people who could not invoke disgrace. They—surely you cannot be alluding to Miss Chandos's runaway marriage!" I broke off, as the thought occurred to me.

"Tush! Runaway marriages are as good as others for what I see," avowed Mrs. Penn, with careless creed. "I question if Miss Chandos even knows of the blow that fell on them. I tell you, child, it was a fearful one. It killed old Sir Thomas; it must be slowly killing Lady Chandos. Do you not observe how they seclude themselves from the world?"

"They might have plenty of visitors if they chose."

"They _don't_ have them. Any one in the secret would wonder if they