Terry listened with smiling eyes, sometimes viewing the lover as a bore, sometimes as a curious study, confirming practical statements. Terry was thoroughly well, only with an insatiable appetite, and he viewed his fellow convalescent's love with double wonder when he found it caused oblivion of hunger, especially as Frank still looked gaunt and sallow, and was avowedly not returned to his usual health.
Rosamond set forth house-hunting, dropping Terry ere long at the Library, where she went to make inquiries, and find the sine qua non. When she reached the sitting-room at the hotel, she found Frank cowering over the fire in an arm-chair, the picture of despondency. Of course, he did not hear her entrance, and she darted up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up to her with an attempt at indifference.
"Well, Frank!"
"Well, Rose! How have you sped?"
"I have got a house; but it is in Marine Terrace. I don't know what you'll say to me."
"I don't know that it signifies."
"You are shivering! What's the matter?"
"Only, it is very cold!"
(Aside. "Ring the bell, Terry, he is as cold as ice.") "Did you see her?"
"Oh yes. Did you have any luncheon?" ("Some port-wine and hot water directly, please.")
"Yes, I believe so. You are not ordering anything for me? There's nothing amiss-only it is so cold."
"It is cold, and you are not to be cold; nor are we to be cold, sir. You must go to bed early in the evening, Terry," said Rosamond, at last. "I shall make nothing of him while you are by, and an hour's more sleep will not be lost on you."
"Will you come and tell me then, Rosey? I deserve something."
"What, for sleeping there instead of here, when you've nothing to do?"
"Indeed, but I have. I want to make out this little Chaucer. I shall go down to the coffee-room and do it."
"Well, if you like poking out your eyes with the gas in the coffee-room, I have no objection, since you are too proud to go to bed. Wish him good night first, and do it naturally."
"Nature would be thrown away on him, poor fellow," said Terry, as he roused Frank with difficulty to have 'Good night' roared into his ear, and give a listless hand. He was about to deal with Rosamond in the same way, but she said-
"No, I am not going yet," and settled herself opposite to him, with her half-knitted baby's shoe in her hands, and her feet on the fender, her crape drawn up from the fire, disposed for conversation. Frank, on the other hand, fell back into the old position, looking so wretched that she could bear it no longer, picked up the tube, forced it on him, and said, "Do tell me, dear Frank. You used to tell me long ago."
He shook his head. "That's all over. You are very good, Rosamond, but you should not have forced her to come to me."
"Not!"
"My life was not worth saving."
"She has not gone back from you again?-the horrible girl!" (this last aside).
"It is not that she has gone back. She has never changed. It is I who have forfeited her."
"You!-You!-She has not cast you off?"
"You know how it was, and the resolution by which she had bound herself, and how I was maddened."
"That! I thought it was all forgiven and forgotten!" cried Rosamond.
"It is not a matter of forgiveness. She put it to me whether it was possible to begin on a broken word."
"Worse and worse! Why, when you've spoken a foolish word, it is the foolishest thing in the world to hold to it."
"If it were a foolish word!" said poor Frank. "I think I could have atoned for that day, if she could have tried me; but when she left me to judge, and those eyes of sweet, sorrowful-"
"Sweet! Sorrowful, indeed! About as sweet and sorrowful as the butcher to the lamb. Left you to judge! A refinement of cruelty! She had better have stayed away when I told her it was the only chance to save your life."
"Would that she had!" sighed Frank. "But that was your doing, Rosamond, and what she did in mere humanity can't be cast back again to bind her against her conscience."
"Plague on her conscience!" was my Lady's imprecation. "I wonder if it is all coquetry!"
"She deserves no blame," said Frank, understanding the manner, though the words were under Rosamond's breath. "Her very troubles in her own family have been the cause of her erecting a standard of what alone she could trust. Once in better days she fancied I came up to it, and when I know how far I have fallen short of it-"
"Nonsense. She had no business to make the condition without warning you."
"She knows more of me than only that," muttered poor Frank. "I was an ass in town last summer. It was the hope of seeing her that drew me; but if I had kept out of that set, all this would never have been."
"It was all for her sake." (A substratum of 'Ungrateful, ungenerous girl.')
"For her sake, I thought-not her true sake." Then there was a silence, broken by his exclaiming, "Rose, I must get away from here!"
"You can't," she called back. "Here's your mother coming. She would be perfectly miserable to find you gone."
"It is impossible I should stay here."
"Don't be so chicken-hearted, Frank. If she has a heart worth speaking of, she'll come round, if you only press hard enough. If not, you are well quit of her."
He cried out at this, and Rosamond saw that what she called faintness of heart was really reverence and sense of his own failings; but none the less did she scorn such misplaced adoration, as it seemed to her, and scold him in her own fashion, for not rushing on to conquer irresistibly; or else being cool and easy as to his rejection. He would accept neither alternative, was depressed beyond the power of comfort, bodily weariness adding to his other ills, and went off at last to bed, without retracting his intention of going away.
"Well, Terry, it is a new phase, and a most perplexing one!" said Rosamond, when her brother came back with arch curiosity in his brown eyes. "The girl has gone and turned him over, and there he lies on his back prostrate, just like Ponto, when he knows he deserves it!"
"Turned him over-you don't mean that she is off? I thought she was a perfect angel of loveliness and goodness."
"Goodness! It is enough to make one hate goodness, unless this is all mere pretence on her part. But what I am afraid of is his setting off, no one knows where, before any one is up, and leaving us to confront his mother, while he falls ill in some dog-hole of a place. He is not fit to go about by himself, and I trust to you to watch him, Terry."
"Shall I lie on the mat outside his door?" said Terry, half meaning it, and somewhat elated by the romantic situation.
"No, we are not come to quite such extremities. You need not even turn his key by mistake; only keep your ears open. He is next to you, is he not?-and go in on pretext of inquiry-if you hear him up to mischief."
Nothing was heard but the ordinary summons of Boots; and it turned out in the morning that the chill had exasperated his throat, and reduced him to a condition which took away all inclination to move, besides deafening him completely.
Rosamond had to rush about all day, providing plenishing for the lodging. Once she saw Sir Harry and his daughter in the distance, and dashed into a shop to avoid them, muttering, "I don't believe she cared for him one bit. I dare say she has taken up with Lorimer Strangeways after all! Rather worse than her sister, I declare, for she never pretended to be too good for Raymond," and then as a curate in a cassock passed-"Ah! some of them have been working on her, and persuading her that he is not good enough for her. Impertinent prig! He looks just capable of it!"