“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure.”
It was hard work to obey Mr. Mervyn’s recommendation to be sphinx-like. But as the dogcart jogged down the steep incline leading to the garden entrance of the house, Hugh rallied himself, and determined to put aside all personal feeling, all emotions and passions, to follow no impulse, and to bear in mind that he was here on duty, as a species of death-bed sentinel—silent, motionless, except to salute the passing soul.
The house looked the same, as houses will, happen what may. There was even a greater gaiety about the place. A windy autumn day, when the cloudlets sail joyously across the luminous blue sky, and the red and golden trees are shaken by the fresh breezes, has a liveliness of its own, as if Nature were at play after the hard work of the spring and summer before the night of winter sets in, when she herself falls asleep. And within these four walls? As Hugh alighted at the garden door, and walked in without ringing the bell (all bells had been muffled by the doctors’ orders), he did not think with any pleasurable anticipation of the possible scene within.
But he miscalculated the influence of the young girl who was so soon to be left alone in the world.
As he entered the hall by one door, Lilia came in by another. She looked pale and thinner in her clinging grey gown; but she was calm, and met him with a half-smile and clinging clasp of the hand.
“You know?” she asked, in a hushed voice.
“That he is doomed by the doctors, and that a letter and two telegrams were not sent to me? Yes,” he said, dryly.
“I trusted——” She hesitated, and looked round.
“Explanations afterwards,” she added, with a hopeless, bitter meaning in her tones and manner. “Now we must only think of him. Will you have some refreshment, or see him now?”
“Now, at once,” said Hugh.