He paid a short visit to Lady
Robert at Cumnor, and professed deepest concern to find in her a
pallor and an ailing air which no one else had yet observed. He
expressed himself on the subject to Mrs. Buttelar and the other
members of her ladyship's household, reproaching them with their
lack of care of their mistress. Mrs. Buttelar became indignant
under his reproaches.
"Nay, now, Sir Richard, do you wonder that my lady is sad and
downcast with such tales as are going of my lord's doings at
court, and of what there is 'twixt the Queen and him? Her
ladyship may be too proud to complain, but she suffers the more
for that, poor lamb. There was talk of a divorce awhile ago that
got to her ears."
"Old wives' tales," snorted Sir Richard.
"Likely," agreed Mrs. Buttelar. "Yet when my lord neither comes
to Cumnor, nor requires her ladyship to go to him, what is she to
think, poor soul?"
Sir Richard made light of all, and went off to Oxford to find a
physician more accommodating than Dr. Bayley. But Dr. Bayley had
talked too much, and it was in vain that Sir Richard pleaded with
each of the two physicians he sought that her ladyship was
ailing--"sad and heavy"--and that he must have a potion for her.
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