He hurried away, leaving her, too, with the song of love and life and hope echoing around her. Her loneliness had passed from her.
He ran up the stairs to his bedroom, found the book, and was just running down again, when he paused outside his boy's room, which was opposite to his own.
"I will slip in and see if he is asleep," he thought. "Then my mind will be easier about him."
He opened the door gently, treading as softly as a loving mother might tread who has come in the stealth of the night to see if all was well with the beloved bairns; to touch each one on the dear head, as in blessing, to smile at each one and then creep out again, satisfied and comforted. Alan was sleeping, but restlessly. The bedclothes were thrown off him, and he was murmuring something in his dreams. His father bent over him and covered him up. He did not wake, but went on, whispering a few disconnected words. Clifford bent to listen, and he heard, "Mother ... Mrs Stanhope...." Then there came a sort of sob. The man's heart stood still. He waited with bowed head. The boy was dreaming of his mother. Was he perhaps remembering in his dream how he used to come and say to his father, "Mother has been with Mrs Stanhope to-day"? That was the only comment on Marianne which ever passed between father and son; it was their code, their signal of danger. Was it that? Or what was it? What was troubling him?
Suddenly the thought flashed through the man's mind:
"Has he seen that woman somewhere?"
And again the old miserable fear took possession of him. He longed to kneel down by the side of the bed and beg his little son to tell him everything that was in his heart, so that nothing and no one might ever come between them. He knew that when the morrow came he himself would be too proud and reserved to ask, and his boy too proud and reserved to own to any secret grief, however great. He had been like that himself as a boy—he was scarcely any different now—he, a grown man; he understood so well this terrible stone wall of reserve which the prisoners themselves would fain pierce. Supposing he were to waken the boy now and ask him, this very moment? Perhaps it would be easier to tell, this very moment.
He did not waken him after all; for Alan's restlessness subsided suddenly, and he passed into quiet sleep. So Clifford stole out of the room and stood waiting at the top of the staircase, in doubt as to whether he should go down or not. At last he went down, impelled against his will. Katharine saw at once the change of expression on his face.
"I feel greatly troubled, Miss Frensham," he said in his half-reluctant way. "My boy has been unhappy all the day, and now he is talking in his sleep about—about that Mrs Stanhope. After what you told me, I hope with all my heart that she has not seen him."
"Oh no, no. It can only be a coincidence," Katharine said.