The winter is by no means barren to those who spend it habitually in town. It has many distractions. There is the theatre, there are Christmas gatherings without number, there are new dresses also to be got for the same, perhaps a pretty new bonnet or two thrown in by a penitent father, very sorry even in his own interests to give his little girl pain. If all these pleasant things could not make up for the loss of a man--of doubtful character, too--whom she had only known for a month, Colonel Kingsward felt that it would be a strange thing indeed, and altogether beyond his power to explain.
It was not possible, however, to remove Mrs. Kingsward to Kingswarden next day. She was too much fatigued even to leave her bed, and the doctor who came to see her, her own familiar doctor who had sent her to Germany to the celebrated bath, looked a little grave when he saw the condition in which she had come home. “No fatigue, no excitement,” was what he enjoined. She was to have nothing to excite, nothing to disturb her--to go to the country? Oh, yes, but not for some days. To see the children? Certainly, the children could not be kept from their mother; but all in moderation, with great judgment, not too long at a time, not too often. And above all she must not be worried. Nothing must be done, nothing said to cross or vex her. When he heard from the Colonel a very brief and studiously subdued version of a little family business which had disturbed her--“I need not keep any secrets from you, doctor. The fact is that someone wanted to marry my girl Bee, and that I made some discoveries about him which obliged me to withdraw my consent.” The doctor formed his lips into a whistle, to which he did not give vent. “That accounts for it,” he said.
“That accounts for--what?” cried Colonel Kingsward, not without irritation.
“For the state in which I find her. And mind my words, Kingsward, you’d better let your girl marry anybody that isn’t a blackguard than risk that sort of shock with your wife. Never forget that her life---- I mean to say that she’s very delicate. Don’t let her be worried--stretch a point--have things done as she wishes. You will find it pay best in the end.”
“For once you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow,” said Colonel Kingsward; “my wife is not a woman who has ever been set upon having her own way.”