No man advises
so badly on a false and partial statement as I do, for the very reason
that my advice is a close fit. Even now I can't understand Sir
Charles's despair of having children of his own."
The writer then turned his looks on the two women, with an entire
absence of expression; the sense of his eyes was turned inward, though
the orbs were directed toward his visitors.
With this lack-luster gaze, and in the tone of thoughtful soliloquy, he
said, "Has Sir Charles Bassett no eyes? and are there women so furtive,
so secret, or so bashful, they do not tell their husbands?"
Lady Bassett turned with a scared look to Mary Wells, and that young
woman showed her usual readiness. She actually came to Mr. Rolfe and
half whispered to him, "If you please, sir, gentlemen are blind, and my
lady she is very bashful; but Sir Charles knows it now; he have known
it a good while; and it was a great comfort to him; he was getting
better, sir, when the villains took him--ever so much better."
This solution silenced Mr. Rolfe, though it did not quite satisfy him.
He fastened on Mary Wells's last statement. "Now tell me: between the
day when those two doctors got into his apartment and the day of his
capture, how long?"
"About a fortnight."
"And in that particular fortnight was there a marked improvement?"
"La, yes, sir; was there not, my lady?"
"Indeed there was, sir.
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