The excitement was over, and every one was suffering from a profound reaction. Rachel's cold was no better, and her temper was decidedly worse; for although the sermons still lay on her table, both they and the illness that had brought them into requisition had lost the charm of novelty. However—like the ravages of drink in relation to the efforts of temperance reformers—it was of course impossible to say how much worse she might have been without them.
Mona had by no means escaped the general depression consequent on the bazaar and the ball, and her cousin's querulousness was a heavy strain upon her endurance. Fortunately, it had the effect of putting her on her mettle. "I am certainly not fit to be a doctor," she thought, "if I cannot bear and forbear in a simple little case like this." So she went from shop to parlour, and from parlour to shop, with a light step and a cheerful face, striving hard to keep Rachel supplied with scraps of gossip that would amuse her without tempting her to talk.
"Mrs Smith has come to inquire for you," she said, as she entered the close little sitting-room. "Do you think you ought to see her? You know you made your chest worse by talking to Mrs Anderson the other day."
"And how am I to get well, I should like to know, mope, mope, moping all by myself from morning till night? All these blessed days I've sat here, while other folks were gallivanting about taking their pleasure. It's easy for you to say, 'Don't see her,' after all the ploy you've been having, and all the folk you are seeing in the shop to-day."
"Very well, I will bring her up; but do you let her talk, and save your voice as much as you can."
The interview was a long one, but it did not appear to have the desired effect of improving Rachel's spirits.
"Upon my word," she said, when the visitor had gone, "I never knew anybody so close as you are. One would think, after all the pleasure you've been having, while I've been cooped up in the house, that you'd be glad to tell me any bit of news."
"Why, cousin," laughed Mona, "what else have I been doing? I have even told you what everybody wore!"
"The like of that!" said Rachel scornfully; "and you never told me you got the word of her ladyship? I wonder what Mrs Smith would think of me knowing nothing about it?"
Mona was puzzled for a moment. "Oh," she said suddenly, "Lady Kirkhope! She only said a few words to me."
"And how many would she say—the like of her to the like of you! I suppose you think because your mother's sister is married on a Sir, that their ladyships are as common as gooseberries. Much your mother's sister has done for you—leaving you to take all sorts of maggots into your head! But I've no doubt you think a sight more of her than you do of me, for all the time you've been with me."
This was the first time the Munros had been mentioned between the cousins, and Mona was not anxious to pursue the subject. "Your mother's sister married on a Sir." Oh, the sordidness of it!
Mona had refused to see the Sahib again during his stay at the Towers, and although she could not for a moment regret her refusal, she was conscious of a distinct sense of emptiness in her life. There was no doubt that for the moment she had lost her friend; and perhaps things might never again be as they had been before his clumsy and lamentable mistake. But although he was lost to her directly, she was only now beginning to possess him through Doris.
"He will see her constantly for the next two months," she thought, "and he cannot but love her. He loves her now, if he only knew it. It is absurd to suppose that he ever looked at me with that light in his eyes. He analyses me, and admires me deliberately, but Doris bowls him over. Whether she will care for him, is another question; but I am sure he at least possesses the prime merit in her eyes of being a Sir Galahad; and by the doctrine of averages, a magnificent son of Anak like that cannot be refused by two sensible women within the space of two months. He will consider himself bound to me of course, but he will fall in love with her all the faster for that; and at the appointed time he will duly present himself in much fear and trembling lest I should take him at his word. How amusing it will be!" And a cold little ray of sunshine stole across the chill grey mists of her life.
That day Rachel's appetite failed for the first time. Her face was more flushed than usual, and her moist, flabby hands became dry and hot. In some uneasiness Mona produced her clinical thermometer, and found that her cousin's temperature had run up to 102°.
"You are a little feverish, dear," she said lightly. "I don't think it is going to be anything serious, but it will be wise to go to bed and let me fetch the doctor. Shall I send Sally or go myself?"
"Send Sally," was the prompt reply, "and let him find out for himself that I am feverish. Don't tell him anything about that machine of yours. He'd think it wasn't canny for the like of you."
"I will do as you please, of course; but lots of people have thermometers now, who know no more of medicine—than that spoon. Not but what the spoon's experience of the subject has been both varied and profound!" she added, smiling, as she remembered Rachel's love for domestic therapeutica.
Rachel smiled too at the feeble little joke. The knowledge that she was really ill had improved her spirits wonderfully, partly by gratifying her sense of self-importance, and partly by making the occasion seem worthy of the manifestation of a little practical Christianity.
It was evening when the doctor arrived, and then, of course, he could say but little. Milk diet, a cooling draught, no visitors, and patience. He would call about noon the next day.
"I fear you are as much in need of rest and care as my cousin is," said Mona, when a fit of coughing interrupted his final directions to her at the door.
"I am fairly run off my feet," he said. "I have had a lot of night-work, and now this bout of frivolity has given me a crop of bronchial attacks and nervous headaches. I have got a friend to take my work for a fortnight, but he can't come for a week or ten days yet. I must just rub along somehow in the meantime. A good sharp frost would do us all good; this damp weather is perfectly killing."
As if in answer to his wish, the frost came that night with a will. In the morning Mona found a tropical forest on her window-panes; and in a moment up ran the curtains of the invisible. The shop and the dingy house fell into their true perspective, and she felt herself a sentient human being—dowered with the glorious privilege of living.
Rachel was no better, and as soon as Mona had made her patient and the room as neat and fresh as circumstances would allow, she set out to do the marketing. "Send Sally," Rachel said; but customers never came before ten, and Mona considered it the very acme of squalor to leave that part of the housekeeping to chance, in the shape of a thriftless, fusionless maid-of-all-work. She walked quickly through the sharp frosty air, and came in with a sprinkle of snow on her dark fluffy fur, and a face like a half-blown rose.
"The doctor has just gone up-stairs," whispered Sally, and Mona hastened up to find, not Dr Burns, but Dr Dudley. She was too much taken by surprise to conceal the pleasure she felt, and, much as Dudley had counted on this meeting, his brain well-nigh reeled under the exquisite unconscious flattery of her smile. It was a minute before he could control himself sufficiently to speak.
"I am afraid Dr Burns is ill," said Mona, as she took his hand.
"Yes, poor fellow! He is very much below par altogether, and he has taken a serious chill, which has settled on his lungs. I fear it will be some time before he is about again. A substitute will be here in a week, I hope; and in the meantime, nolens volens, I am thrust into the service. Thank you, Miss Simpson, that will do, I think." He took the thermometer to the light, and then gave Mona a few directions. "You have not got one of these things, I suppose?" he said.
"I never even had one in my hand," put in Rachel hastily.
"You know you can easily get one," added Mona severely.
"Oh, it's of no consequence. I think there is no doubt that this is only a feverish cold. I wish I had no more serious case. Go on with the mixture, but I should like Miss Simpson to take some quinine as well. I have no doubt she will be about again in a few days."
He wrote a prescription—very unnecessarily, Mona thought,—and then she followed him down-stairs. When they reached the shop he deliberately stopped, and turned to face her. He did not speak; his mind was in a whirl. He was thinking no longer of the beauty of her mind, and character, and face; he had ceased even to admire. He only knew that he wanted her, that he had found her out, that she was his by right; every other thought and feeling was merged in the consciousness that he was alone with the woman he loved. Oh, how good it was to lose one's self at last in a longing like this!
His back was turned to the light, and Mona wondered why her "playfellow" was so silent.
"This is an unfortunate holiday for you," she said.
He shook himself out of his dream, and answered gaily, "Oh, I don't know. This sort of thing is a rest in one way at least,—it does not call the same brain-cells into requisition, and it gives me a little anticipation of the manhood my cursed folly has postponed."
Of course the humble words were spoken very proudly; and he looked every inch a man even to eyes that still retained a vivid picture of the Sahib. His shoulders seemed more broad and strong in the heavy becoming Inverness cape, he held himself more upright than formerly, and his face had gained an expression of quiet self-confidence.
"Work suits you," said Mona, smiling.
"That it does!" He brought his closed fist vehemently down upon the counter. "When my examination is over, Miss Maclean, I shall be a different being,—in a position to do and say things that I dare not do and say now."
He spoke with emphasis, half hoping she would understand him, and then broke off with sudden bitterness—
"Unless I fail!"
"You fail!" laughed Mona.
"Ah! so outsiders always say. I can assure you, you have no idea how chancy those London examinations are."
The colour rushed into her face. A dozen times she had tried to ask Rachel's permission to tell him all; a dozen times the question, "Why him rather than any one else?" had sealed her lips. What if she were to make a clean breast of it now, and risk her cousin's anger afterwards! She could never hope for such another opportunity.
She was determined to use it, to tell him she knew the chances of those examinations only too well; but to her surprise she found the confession far more difficult than the one she had made to the Sahib. At the very thought of it, her heart beat hard and her breath came fast.
"This is too absurd!" she thought, in fierce indignation at her own weakness. "What do I care what he thinks? But if I cannot speak without panting as if I were trying to turn a mill, I must hold my peace. It is of little consequence, after all, whether he knows or not."
"Do you know," said Dudley deliberately, "I thought for a moment that I had come into the wrong house this morning? I never should have recognised your—quarters."
"Did you notice the difference? You must have a quick eye and a good memory."
Notice the difference! He had noticed few things in the last six months that had given him half the pleasure of that sweeping reformation. Dudley was no giant among men; but, if he cared for name and outward appearance, at least he cared more for reality; and, I think, the sight of that fresh, business-like, creditable shop was a greater comfort to his mind than it would have been to see his Cinderella at the ball. He had ceased to regret that Mona was a shopkeeper, but he was not too much in love to be glad that she was a good shopkeeper.
"I knew your influence was bound to tell in the long-run," he said. "I suppose Miss Simpson did not greatly encourage you to interfere?"
"No, but she has been very good. I don't believe I should have left an assistant as free a hand as she left me. I hope you admire my window. I call it a work of art."
"I call it something a great deal better than that," he said rather huskily, as he held out his hand. "Good morning."
"Bless her!" he said to himself as he jumped into his gig. "She never apologises for the shop—never speaks as if it were something beneath her. My God, what a snob I am!"
As soon as he was gone, Mona raised the hand he had shaken, and looked at it deliberately. Then she took a few turns up and down the shop. "I never mean to marry," she said very slowly to herself, "and I don't suppose I shall ever know what it is to be in love; but it would be a fine test of a man's sincerity to see whether he would be willing to take me simply and solely as I am now—as Rachel Simpson's assistant."
The next day was Sunday, and Rachel was so much better that she insisted on Mona's going to church.
"Folk will be thinking it is something catching," she said, "and by the time I'm down-stairs again, there'll be nobody in the shop to talk to."
It was a bright, crisp morning, but Mona found the service rather a barren one.
"I suppose the doctor has been here," she said with marked indifference, when she re-entered Rachel's room.
"Yes; and very pleased he was to find me so well. He says I'm to get up to tea to-day, and go out for ten minutes to-morrow, if all's well. He is very busy, and he's not to come back unless we send for him. He's not one of them that tries how many visits they can put in."
"No," said Mona drearily, and then she roused herself with an effort. "I am so glad you are better, dear," she said. "Mr Stuart is coming to see you to-morrow afternoon.”