Mrs. Browning watched him anxiously these weeks. Somehow she was more strongly alive to the change in him than was Fulvia, perhaps because Fulvia would not let herself see. Mrs. Browning did see. She had a constant feeling that this Nigel was not altogether her Nigel, her boy!
She had nothing to complain of definitely. He was very good to her, as to Fulvia; carefully attentive to them both; but the old sunshine was wanting. Life seemed with him to have grown into an embodiment of severe duty, unrelieved by pleasure. There was no relaxing. He worked hard, read hard, walked a certain amount daily, went through a steady routine; but nothing was done lightly. He had never shown so little inclination for talk. Except in the evenings, he was chiefly away, and in the evenings, he always had a book. If Mrs. Browning or Fulvia showed a wish for conversation, he responded kindly, but with a manifest effort, and it never lasted long.
Mrs. Browning craved for his old look, his old smile,—craved at times with a passionate longing. She did not know how to give up her former Nigel.
There is no love on earth like a mother's love: no love so pure, so lasting, so unselfish; no love which comes so near the love of God Himself,—though infinitely distant from it. As everything human varies, so in different natures the quality of even this varies; and Mrs. Browning's was not, perhaps, of the very highest type of mother-love. She did love her children intensely, but in some measure it was for and in herself. Yet when a test time came, the reality of her love would lift her superior to her ordinary self; and such a test time had come now. She know that Nigel was not happy, and she was far too true a mother to rest in that knowledge. Worse still, she knew that she had had a hand in bringing on the present condition of things, and that she might not lift a finger to undo what she had wrought. This knowledge weighed upon her heavily.
Thus, when the sunny month of May came, there were clouds as well as sunshine in the sky of No. 9 Bourne Street.
Fulvia was alone, but Daisy presently came in with a whisk and a rush, upsetting two small chairs.
"Daisy!"
"There's no room for anything here."
"The more need to carry one's limbs discreetly! I wish you would help me with these antimacassars. I want to get them done before lunch."
"Why? There must be lots of old ones good enough."