Chapter 10

"IT has NOT been recovered," I wrote early the next day, "and I'm
moreover much troubled about our friend. He came back from Bigwood
with a chill and, being allowed to have a fire in his room, lay
down a while before dinner. I tried to send him to bed and indeed
thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had gone to
dress Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him, with the inevitable result
that when I returned I found him under arms and flushed and
feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him
for his button-hole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta
Minch was very shy of him. To-day he's in great pain, and the
advent of ces dames - I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes -
doesn't at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for she
has consented to his remaining in bed so that he may be all right
to-morrow for the listening circle. Guy Walsingham's already on
the scene, and the Doctor for Paraday also arrived early. I
haven't yet seen the author of 'Obsessions,' but of course I've had
a moment by myself with the Doctor. I tried to get him to say that
our invalid must go straight home - I mean to-morrow or next day;
but he quite refuses to talk about the future. Absolute quiet and
warmth and the regular administration of an important remedy are
the points he mainly insists on. He returns this afternoon, and
I'm to go back to see the patient at one o'clock, when he next
takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly
won't be able to read - an exertion he was already more than unfit
for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring me her first
care would be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she
thinks me a shocking busybody and doesn't understand my alarm, but
she'll do what she can, for she's a good-natured woman. 'So are
they all honourable men.' That was precisely what made her give
the thing to Lord Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it. What use
HE has for it God only knows. I've the worst forebodings, but
somehow I'm strangely without passion - desperately calm. As I
consider the unconscious, the well-meaning ravages of our
appreciative circle I bow my head in submission to some great
natural, some universal accident; I'm rendered almost indifferent,
in fact quite gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of immitigable fate. Lady
Augusta promises me to trace the precious object and let me have it
through the post by the time Paraday's well enough to play his part
with it. The last evidence is that her maid did give it to his
lordship's valet. One would suppose it some thrilling number of
THE FAMILY BUDGET. Mrs. Wimbush, who's aware of the accident, is
much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were she not
for the hour inevitably