"Not essentially worse, I trust."
She was looking at me keenly from the corners of her almond-shaped eyes. It was only a glance, but a gleam of suspicion sprung from my heart and met it half-way.
"It is difficult to tell. In a lingering disease like hers, one can never be sure."
"Mr. Lee must find himself lonesome at times without his lady's society, for she struck us all as a very superior person."
"On the contrary," I replied, with a quick impulse, for she still kept that sidelong glance on my face; "on the contrary, he spends most of his leisure time in her chamber, reads to her when she can bear it, and sits gently silent when she prefers that. A more devoted husband I never knew."
I saw that she was biting her red lips, but as my glance caught hers, the action turned to a smile.
"There is Mr. Lee going to his wife's room now," I remarked, as that gentleman passed the hall-door, with a little basket in his hand filled with delicate wood-moss, in which lay two or three peaches, the first of the season.
The exclamation that broke from Mrs. Dennison at the sight of the fruit arrested his steps, and he turned into the hall, asking if either of us had called.
She went forward at once, sweeping the cloth skirt after her like the train of an empress.
"Oh, what splendid peaches—and the basket! The bijou!" She held out both hands to receive the fruit, quite in a glow of pleasure.