George’s look was hardly of assent. He said gently—“She is your own mother, Joan—nothing can undo that. Wrongly as she acted, the tie remains. I cannot think much yet, I can only feel. We shall see in time what is right. God is a very present help, darling, always, at all times. But he does not always help us just as we would choose. He brings us often by ways that we cannot understand.”
[CHAPTER XXV.]
PERPLEXITY.
GEORGE RUTHERFORD was going downhill steadily. Bodily and mental powers seemed to be failing him together. As the long summer days grew brighter and more warm he appeared to be held in the grasp of an indescribable sadness, preventing all his wonted enjoyment of fair sights and sounds in nature.
They could not arouse him to his old interest in things around. If Joan coaxed him into the garden he soon asked to return indoors; and if she read aloud he listened without comment, growing speedily weary.
Dulcibel did not think so much of this as did others. Like many people who are greatly given to causeless and unreasoning fears, she was often by no means the first to take alarm where real reason for alarm existed. “George was languid with the spring,” she said. “He would be stronger by-and-by. For her part, she really thought he wanted rousing. It was getting to be quite a habit of depression—very bad for anybody.”
Mr. Forest viewed the matter differently.
“There is something pressing on Mr. Rutherford’s mind,” he said seriously one day, after for a while holding his peace. “I find no other cause sufficient to account for the change in Mr. Rutherford of late.”
Mrs. Rutherford and Joan exchanged meaning looks. As yet no mention of Joan’s newly-found relatives had been made beyond their own circle. Even to Mr. Forest, old and tried friend that he was, not a word had been said. Joan and her adopted mother were almost equally loath to have the matter known, and speech had not yet become necessary. At present George Rutherford seemed disposed to shirk the subject—to put it aside. If Dulcibel brought it forward, he did not respond. If Joan alluded to Mr. Brooke or Marian, he said only—“We shall see what to do before long.”
And still he had gone downward; losing strength day by day; wearing always a look of care and trouble and weariness on the broad brow and in the brown eyes, never seen there in past days. Therefore when Mr. Forest spoke of “something pressing on Mr. Rutherford’s mind,” an involuntary glance passed between Dulcibel and Joan, noted at once by the doctor.