: The Doctor's Wife: A Novel by Braddon M E Mary Elizabeth - Adultery Fiction; Great Britain Fiction; Middle class Fiction; Physicians' spouses Fiction

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o should want to see me at such a time of night? Is there anything wrong? Is it any one from--from Lowlands?"

Mr. Lansdell's valet coughed doubtfully behind his hand, and looked discreetly at the carved oaken bosses in the ceiling. Roland started to his feet.

"Mrs. Gilbert," he muttered, "at such an hour as this! It can't be; she would never--Show the lady here, whoever she is," he added aloud to his servant. "There must be something wrong; it must be some very important business that brings any one to this place to-night."

The valet departed, closing the door behind him, and Roland stood alone upon the hearth, waiting for his late visitor. All the warmer tints--he never had what people call "a colour"--faded out of his face, and left him very pale. Why had she come to him at such a time? What purpose could she have in coming to that house, save one? She had come to revoke her decision. For a moment a flood of rapture swept into his soul, warm and revivifying as the glory of a sudden sunburst on a dull grey autumn day; but in the next moment,--so strange and subtle an emotion is that which we call love,--a chill sense of regret crept into his mind, and he was almost sorry that Isabel should come to him thus, even though she were to bring him the promise of future happiness.

"My poor ignorant, innocent girl--how hard it seems that my love must for ever place her at a disadvantage!" he thought.

Mr. Lansdell wheeled forward a chair, but he was obliged to ask her to sit down; and even then she seated herself with the kind of timid irresolution he had so often seen in a burly farmer come to supplicate abnormal advantages in the renewal of a lease.

"It can never be anything but a pleasure to me to see you," Roland answered, gravely, "even though the pleasure is strangely mingled with pain. You have come to me, perhaps, because you are in some kind of trouble, and have need of my services in some way or other. I am very much pleased to think that you can so far confide in me; I am very glad to think that you can rely on my friendship."

Mr. Lansdell said this because he saw that the Doctor's Wife had come to demand some favour at his hands, and he wished to smooth the way for that demand. Isabel looked up at him with something like surprise in her gaze. She had not expected that he would be like this--calm, self-possessed, reasonable. A mournful feeling took possession of her heart. She thought that his love must have perished altogether, or he could not surely have been so kind to her, so gentle and dispassionate. She looked at him furtively as he lounged against the farther angle of the massive mantel-piece. His transient passion had worn itself out, no doubt, and he was deep in the tumultuous ocean of a new love affair,--a glittering duchess, a dark-eyed Clotilde,--some brilliant creature after one of the numerous models in the pages of the "Alien."

She stopped, and sat silently twisting the handle of her parasol--the old green parasol under whose shadow Roland had so often seen her. It was quite evident that her courage had failed her altogether at this crisis.

"Whatever it is, it shall be granted," Roland answered, "without question, without comment."

"I have come to ask you to lend me,--or at least I had better ask you to give it me, for indeed I don't know when I should ever be able to repay it,--some money, a great deal of money,--fifty pounds."

She looked at him as if she thought the magnitude of the sum must inevitably astonish him, and she saw a tender half-melancholy smile upon his face.

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