"Perhaps not; but you needn't look so awfully solemn. What is the matter?"
She came down the last steps in tremulous style, laughing at herself, and put a hand on his arm.
"Anything gone wrong? Have you seen Mr. Carden-Cox?"
"Yes. Where are you going?"
"I'm bent on a talk with the padre; but I must rest for five minutes first. Yes, please help me."
Nigel responded without words, and she crossed the hall into the morning-room, dropping on the nearest chair with a vanquished look.
"I didn't know a few days in one's bedroom could make one so horribly weak. I feel just like a teetotum, ready to go down. What are you thinking about?"
Weak as she felt, her eyes scanned him with their usual penetration, and Nigel could not stand it. He turned abruptly, and walked into the bow-window, taking a book from the table, and making believe to read it. Fulvia might think him ill-tempered if she liked. He was not able to endure being questioned.
Fulvia made no further attempt at the moment. "Poor boy!" she said to herself, and a softened look came into her face. She was accustomed of old to think of him as a boy, and to count herself a little older in mind, a little better able to manage things for him as well as for herself than he was; and she had not yet shaken off the old habit of thought.
But when he came back from the bow-window, holding his open book in one hand, it was no boy's face that met her glance. He was very pale; and the compression of the lips, the bent brows, were unmistakably those of a man.