And then
Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange
dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her
immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her
easy-chair.
"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of
this pretty place cannot make me happy long."
* * * * *
Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that
simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered
that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would
be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore
brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic.
"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe
the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get
it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the
chemist's herself."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your
medicine, did she?"
"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could
scarcely have seemed more anxious."
The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his
brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a
troublesome sort of person.
"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old
lady," he said to himself.
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