property.
Her first appearance out of doors took the form of a visit to a neighbouring small town--not Carnoustie--where she purchased such articles of attire as she imagined she required, together with a trunk to contain them. These she paid for out of Nannie's store. She did not think it necessary to inform Mr. Grahame how she had used what was, after all, his money. She did not seem to think it worth her while to tell him anything.
Her mind was occupied with various problems. First and foremost, she was extremely anxious to ascertain how much money the man she called her husband actually had, where it was, and how it could be got at, say by one who had a right to get at it. Almost as if he were conscious of what was transpiring in her brain, Cuthbert Grahame took advantage of an opportunity which arose, or which he, perhaps, made himself, to volunteer some information on the subject on his own account. The afternoon on which the conversation took place would have been memorable for something else, even if he had not seen fit to make her the receptacle of some very interesting confidences.
Isabel was an active young woman; healthy, full-blooded, vigorous, one in whose veins the blood ran strong. Inaction to her was punishment. So soon as her ankle permitted, and it proceeded to a rapid and complete recovery, she spent a portion of each day in taking the air--that portion of the day which was not spent in prying into everything the house contained. As her researches drew to a conclusion--as even the most thorough investigation allowed them to do in time--that unoccupied portion became more and more. So, having examined the inside of the house she turned her attention to the outside, to learn that her husband's estate was of considerable extent. She wandered up and down it, to and fro, till she began to be almost as intimately acquainted with it as with the contents of the residence. One afternoon she was indulging in one of these rambles when she received what really amounted to a shock.
She was passing through one of the woods of which her husband's property seemed chiefly to consist, and was resting on the bole of a tree, when she heard the sound of wheels. She was perhaps in a peculiar mood, because it immediately brought back to her that night on which she had listened--with what an anxious heart!--to the wheels of Dr. Twelves' approaching trap. Passers-by, thereabouts, were few and far between; for days together she would not encounter any. She had grown to love seclusion, possibly for sufficient reasons of her own. She was seated on a slope. The road began at the foot, perhaps thirty feet away. She instinctively altered her position, so that, while she could see herself, the trunk of the tree almost entirely screened her from observation. She wondered who was coming, peeping round to see. When she did see she drew back with a start.
In the dogcart which presently appeared was her husband--her real husband--Gregory Lamb. The sight of him took her wholly by surprise, and filled her with unwonted perturbation. What was he doing there? What could have brought him to that neighbourhood? She had taken it for granted that he had long since returned to London. Even Mrs. Macconichie's--supposing he was still there, which seemed unlikely--was a good twelve miles away. She was conscious that he was not alone in the trap. Who his companion was she had not noticed; she had not time.
The vehicle drew rapidly level with the tree on which she rested. She decided that she might venture to peep again, and was just doing so when the horse shied so violently that the cart was almost overturned. Recovering itself, apparently getting the bit between its teeth, it bolted like a thing possessed, and vanished from her sight, though not before she had nearly convinced herself that the man with her husband--the one who was driving--was Dr. Twelves. She had only seen him from the back, and then had had but occasional glimpses through intervening trees for half-a-dozen seconds, but she was almost sure that it was he. There was, however, just a possibility that she was mistaken, and it was that possibility which worried her. She would have liked to have been certain, either one way or the other. Then, in the case of the worst, she might have been prepared.
For the juxtaposition could but mean trouble for her. She was too clear-sighted to delude herself with the notion that the doctor was anxious to be a friend of hers. He had, to outward seeming, accepted the situation; probably, in part, because, as she herself put it, she was no ordinary woman; and partly because, under the circumstances, considering the part which he himself had played, he did not see what else there was for him to do. Let him, however, learn how wholly baseless was her claim to occupy the place which she had arrogated to herself, and she did not for a moment doubt that he would use that knowledge to oust her from it in the shortest possible space of time.
The only two points on which she had her doubts were: Was it really the doctor who was driving Gregory Lamb? and, if so, had Gregory Lamb given him cause to even suspect the relation in which she stood to him? On a third point there was no doubt--the dogcart had been moving from, not towards the house, so that in any case the peril was not actually approaching her now.
Another thought suddenly occurred to her, one which set her heart beating faster than was altogether agreeable. The doctor and her husband might have been to the house already, in which case danger might be awaiting her return to what she had learned to call her home.
That was a question which might be quickly resolved--she would resolve it quickly. She started off homewards then and there, telling herself as she went that, whatever had happened, or might happen, they should only be rid of her on terms of her own.
It turned out that, so far, nothing had happened; to that extent, at least, her agitation had been uncalled for. No one had been near the house since she had left it; nothing had happened which was in any way out of the common. The relief she felt at learning even so much showed how real she had imagined the danger was. With some vague idea of subjecting him to cross-examination and learning if he had suspicions of her of any sort or kind, so soon as she had removed her hat she paid a visit to Cuthbert Grahame's room.
As usual, he lay immobile between the sheets, preserving that death-in-life rigidity which, it seemed, was to continue his condition to the end. The sight of him struck in her an unwonted note.
"Don't you get tired of lying there?--especially on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the breeze is stealing among the trees and flowers?"
She did not strike a responsive note in him. He was silent for some seconds, then he asked, in his strange, far-away voice, which was like a husky whisper--
"Aren't you well?"
"Oh yes, I'm well enough. I'm only wondering if you're not tired of being ill. It seems to me that you might as well be dead as keep on lying there with only your voice alive--and that's pretty nearly done for."
She had returned to her more familiar mood.
"Tired!--tired!" He repeated the word twice, then after an interval went on: "What's the use of being tired of what has to be? I'm tired of you, but it seems you have to be--so what's the use?"
"I don't see why you need be tired of me. I'm no more to you than a chair or table."
"You're my wife."
"Your wife! It's because I'm your wife that I'm likely to get tired instead of you. I'm not a helpless statue--I'm a woman; I don't want a dead log--I want a man."
"I was once a man."
"You a man!"
"Seems queer, doesn't it?"
"I don't believe it."
"Yet I was, physically, not a bad sample of a man. Now the Lord knows what I am!--a husk, I suppose. There's a man inside me somewhere still."
"You look as if there were, and you sound it."
She laughed, not pleasantly.
