"I should like to help you," Mr. Kelly had said; and Lettice wondered what kind of help he meant. Suppose she were to tell him all, as he had suggested; to open out the dread which had fallen upon her life.
Lettice was to some extent reserved, but it was by training, not by nature. The desire for sympathy and help from another grew upon her in those days. To break through Cecilia's barrier of silence she felt to be an utter impossibility; and Felix had refused to accept the truth—had almost refused to hear what she had to say.
But Mr. Kelly knew already; he knew from Cecilia's own lips how matters were; and he might even be able to assure Lettice that things were not so bad as she feared. She had not heard all, or nearly all, that had passed between him and Cecilia. Some word of hope might have fallen later, which she had missed, and which he could repeat.
Lettice dwelt upon this possibility, until it gained large proportions; and the formal call upon Mr. Kelly, which at first she had shrunk from, became a necessity. Questions of propriety had not yet begun to trouble Lettice; indeed, she counted herself still a child, and Mr. Kelly, albeit a bachelor, was on the highroad to forty. Her hesitation sprang from shyness, and shyness yielded to the stronger desire for comfort.
Mr. Kelly, returning one day from a round of visits among the poor, was told that somebody awaited him in his study; and, proceeding thither, he found himself face to face with Lettice.
"How do you do?" he said kindly. "Is this a good-bye call? I have just been to your lodgings, but your sister was not well enough to see me. They tell me that you leave in three days."
"On Thursday, if—"
"If she is up to the mark, I suppose. Do you think her getting on?"
"I don't know." Lettice looked at him with strange eyes.
Did he mean what he said? When he knew that Cecilia could never recover! Or did he still think, like Felix, in spite of all, that she might get well? She did not remember, perhaps did not know, that patients even when marked for death have still their ups and downs, and often seem for a time to be improving.