Some ten minutes elapsed, during which Amy was restless and anxious; still she would not pause to think now, lest her heart should give way; so she walked about even as Frances Strickland often did in her impatient moods, took up the books one by one off the table and looked at their titles--read them she could not--and then the doctor's heavy tread sounded on the staircase, and she went out and met him.
"Will you come in here, Dr. Ashley?" she said. "I want to thank you for so kindly coming to see Mamma. It is so very kind of you." Amy knew nothing of the ten pound note so carefully stowed away in his waistcoat pocket for the expenses of his homeward journey.
"Pray say no more, my dear Miss Neville," he said. "It pains me."
And Amy did not. Perhaps she thought it was painful to be thanked for what in her innermost heart she half suspected he was paid for.
"How did you find Mamma, Dr. Ashley?" she asked.
"Well, not quite so bright as yesterday, but still no material change for the worse. Dr Sellon tells me she often has these ups and downs."
"Any unusual excitement appears to weaken her for the time. Dr. Sellon does not attend regularly. I only call him in when I think Mamma really requires it."
"Quite right. Your mother's case is one requiring care and--and everything good and strengthening you can give her."
"Do you think Mamma very ill?" Amy could not bring herself to ask if he thought she would recover, although that thought had been at her heart for days, and she had driven it away and would not give it utterance.
"There is weakness,--great weakness," he replied. "I cannot see that Mrs. Neville has any other disease."
"But--but I fear you are evading my question, Dr. Ashley. I wish to know exactly what your opinion is of Mamma."
"My dear young lady," he said, kindly, "the opinion I have given is a true one, though perhaps not all the truth, and--well, she requires great care. There is a prostration of the vital powers--great want of energy. She wants rousing. Every means should be tried to accomplish that; otherwise, I need not say, this weakness and debility will increase, and of necessity do mischief."
"Every means," replied Amy, "but what means? what must I do?"
"Whatever lies in your power: whatever the patient, which I know she is in both senses of the word, expresses a wish for. She should be humoured in everything, but I need not tell you that, Miss Neville."