"'Is lordship is—still alive, my lady," Jarvis told her, choking a little, "but—pretty bad, my lady." Tommy had always laughed at Jarvis' manner, but Brigit liked it now.
The drive seemed endless, but at length there was the lodge, and the carp-pond, and the tennis-court, and—the beautiful old house, all blurred in the driving rain.
"Her ladyship is upstairs, my lady." And Brigit ran up the shallow, red-carpeted steps. But who was this old woman wrapped in a white shawl.
"Brigit——"
It was Lady Kingsmead, and Brigit, looking at her mother, almost fainted for the first time in her life.
"How is he?" she gasped, leaning against the wall and wondering why it was so unsteady.
"He—his throat is better, but—he is very weak and—delirious. His brain, they say, is—over-active." Poor Lady Kingsmead burst into tears, wiping her eyes on the fringe of her shawl.
Brigit patted the strangely shrunken head compassionately. "Don't cry, mother," she said. "Is he in his room?"
"No—in the boudoir. His chimney smokes so in the autumn, you know."
Tommy lay in his own brass bed in the silken nest of his mother, a white-capped nurse by his side. The little boy's face was flushed and his head tossing restlessly to and fro on the embroidered pillows. "There's no use," he was muttering. "I tell you, it's quite silly to waste time; you should have begun long ago. He always said so, and he's right."