"My uncle's playing golf with Mr Iver," remarked Mina. "Tea?"
"No; too sick-roomy. I'm for nothing but strong drink now—and I've had some." He came to the middle of the room and stood between them, flinging his hat on the table where Mr Cholderton's Journal had so lately lain. "My mother's an extraordinary woman," he went on, evidently so full of his thought that he must speak it out; "she's dying joyfully."
After an instant Mina asked, "Why?" Neeld was surprised at the baldness of the question, but Harry took it as natural.
"It's like going off guard—I mean, rather, off duty—to her, I think." He made the correction thoughtfully and with no haste. "Life has always seemed rather like an obligation to do things you don't want to—not that she did them all—and now she's tired, she's glad to leave it to me. Only she wishes I was a bit better-looking, though she won't admit it. She couldn't stand a downright ugly man at Blent, you know. I've a sort of notion"—he seemed to forget Neeld, and looked at Mina for sympathy—"that she thinks she'll be able to come and have a look at
Blent and me in it, all the same." His smile took a whimsical turn as he spoke of his mother's dying fancies.
Mina glanced at Mr Neeld; was the picture visible to him that rose before her eyes—of the poor sprite coming eagerly, but turning sadly away when she saw a stranger enthroned at Blent, and knew not where to look for her homeless, landless son? Mina was not certain that she could safely credit Neeld with such a flight of imagination; still he was listening, and his eyes were very gentle behind his spectacles.
"The parson came to see her yesterday. He's not what you'd call an unusual man, Madame Zabriska—and she is an unusual woman, you know. It was—yes, it was amusing, and there's an end of it." He paused, and added, by way of excuse, "Oh, I know her so well, you see. She wouldn't be left alone with him; she wanted another sinner there."
Mina marked the change in him—the new expansiveness, the new appeal for sympathy. He had forgotten his suspicion and his watchfulness; she was inclined to say that he had forgotten himself. On her death-bed Addie Tristram had exerted her charm once more—and over her own son. Once more a man, whatever his own position, thought mainly of her—and that man was her son. Did Neeld see this? To Neeld it came as the strongest reinforcement to the feelings which bade him hold his peace. It seemed an appeal to him, straight from the death-bed in the valley below. Harry found the old gentleman's gaze fixed intently on him.
"I beg your pardon for troubling you with all this, Mr Neeld," he said, relapsing rather into his defensive attitude. "Madame Zabriska knows my ways."
"No, I don't think I know this new way of yours at all," she objected. "But I like it, Mr Tristram. I