"Madre, dear, I think one of us had better be with you now—Daisy or I. Nigel is so tired."
"Nigel tired! Are you, my dear? Yes, of course—why did I not see sooner? Do make him rest. I don't want anybody here. Never mind about me. I am of no consequence. How could I be so thoughtless?"
"Not thoughtless, indeed," Nigel said, as she broke into a flood of tears. "Fulvia did not mean—"
"Oh, I know—I understand. Everybody is kind. But now he is gone I am so desolate. I have nobody but you—nobody to lean upon. Nigel, my own boy, say you will not leave me! Say you will never, never leave me."
She clung to him, pleading; and Fulvia felt that in the abstract nothing could be more touching than the poor widow's turning to her boy for comfort. In the particular it was—No, Fulvia would not let herself look on another side of the question.
"Mother, you are my charge now," Nigel said with a manly self-control. He would not bind himself with rash promises; but he would assume to the full the responsibility which had fallen upon him.
Mrs. Browning wept on, and clung to him faster; and Nigel waited with dull patience. He might have waited thus another half-hour, but for Fulvia. She hardly knew how she managed to end the scene; yet she did manage it.
Nigel followed her out of the room in a mechanical fashion, and stood outside in the gas-lit passage, leaning against an old carved press, as if energy for another step had failed him.
Fulvia struck a match, and lighted a candle. "Nigel, you are dead-beat. You will go to bed now." There was no immediate answer. Fulvia cast one or two wistful glances at his face, which might have gained years in age during the last few hours.
"No," he said. "I must speak to you first."