_"Must_ I?" said she, sweetly.
"Yes, even if it is only in your own garden."
From that time she used to walk with him nearly every day.
Richard Bassett saw this from his tower of observation; saw it, and
chuckled. "Aha!" said he. "Husband sick in bed. Wife walking in the
garden with a young man--a parson, too. He is dark, she is fair.
Something will come of this. Ha, ha!"
Lady Bassett now talked of sending to London for advice; but Mary Wells
dissuaded her. "Physic can't cure him. There's only one can cure him,
and that is yourself, my lady."
"Ah, would to Heaven I could!"
"Try _my_ way, and you will see, my lady."
"What, _that_ way! Oh, no, no!"
"Well, then, if you won't, nobody else can."
Such speeches as these, often repeated, on the one hand, and Sir
Charles's melancholy on the other, drove Lady Bassett almost wild with
distress and perplexity.
Meanwhile her vague fears of Richard Bassett were being gradually
realized.
Bassett employed Wheeler to sound Dr. Willis as to his patient's
condition.
Dr. Willis, true to the honorable traditions of his profession, would
tell him nothing. But Dr. Willis had a wife. She pumped him: and
Wheeler pumped her.
By this channel Wheeler got a somewhat exaggerated account of Sir
Charles's state.
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