“Almost always. Mr. and Mrs. Wellwood built the house, you know, when they were first married, and Cicely came to them here as a child. She had been left an orphan.”
“How old is she, then?”
“Oh, she must be quite old now,” Antonia in her secure youth computed. “She was older, a good deal, than Malcolm; nearly forty, perhaps.”
“She’s still in mourning, I see.”
“Yes. So am I,” said Antonia, not resentfully, but with an added sadness. “It’s not yet two years, Bevis. And hardly more than a year since Mrs. Wellwood’s death.”
“It’s a matter of feeling, naturally. One doesn’t expect a cousin to wear mourning as long as a widow. But they were like brother and sister, I suppose.”
“Absolutely. Malcolm went to her with everything. He told her all about me when he first fell in love, and she helped him in it all.”
“Will she go on living with you here?”
“Go on? Cicely? Of course she will. I can’t think of this place without her. I think it would kill her if she were to be taken from it. Mrs. Wellwood spoke to me about it before she died. It’s like a sacred trust. She has a little money. It’s not that. But she’s as much a part of it as the trees and hills. She came to me at once, all the same, after everything happened, and said she would perfectly understand if I would rather start anew, quite by myself. There wasn’t a quaver or an appeal. She was, I saw, quite ready. She is the sort of person who is ready for anything. I told her that as long as she lived it was her home. I took her into my arms,” said Antonia, “and, in a sense, she’s been there ever since. Though, in another sense, perhaps the deeper, it’s I who am in hers. She takes such wonderful, such devoted care of me.”
“I see.” Captain Saltonhall was feeling for his cigarette-case. “It’s lucky you are so much attached to each other.—Do you mind?—Will you have one?”