"I hope you will, my dear, but sposin' you don't?" Mrs. Byron returned her friend's glance with a startled look. "Ah, iss, sposin'." She saw at last what her death would have meant both to her husband and her kinsfolk. "Well, I make no promises, but I do see now where I'm to. Iss, I can see through a very small hole, and I'm not too old to learn."
Sabina had been effectually roused. Possessions that are menaced increase in value and as long as Leadville was making changes at Wastralls she would not want to die.
"There's things as you can't alter," she said, thinking Sabina should be prepared for what could not now be helped.
"What can't I alter?"
"He've pulled up the honeysuckle by the porch."
A fugitive colour dyed the wan cheeks. "Have 'ee now, the old villain? Whatever for? The honeysuckle as my poor old mother planted."
Sabina's thoughts were finally diverted from her own trials and, lame or not, she was now only too anxious to stop this meddling with what was hers.
"He's always after something new." Leadville could not have known that she treasured the climber. She was sure he would not knowingly have hurt her feelings. Whenever he did anything that to her was incomprehensible, Sabina put it down, not to design, but want of thought. She was of those who cannot see into the heart of a matter.
"I like the old things best," she continued, and her eyes, those impersonal eyes, which were the blue of a December sky, shone with new purpose. "We'll have no more of they doin's. Where's that traäde Nurse wanted for me to take? I feel I could drink some now."
Byron, busy putting his plans into execution, nearly forgot on what their success hung. He had thrown himself into the work with the eagerness of a man in all ways extreme. He was living his dream and he was happy. After one or two non-committal post cards from Dr. Derek, however, came the news that, though her husband would be wise not to build on it, Mrs. Byron was holding her own. By this time some of the glass-houses were up, and the land below the house, which should have been in dredge-corn, was planted with sugar-beet. For the first time Byron felt a qualm of anxiety. He had not imagined it possible Sabina could survive the amputation of her legs. In giving leave for the operation to be performed, he had believed that he was hastening—with the doctor's kind assistance—the inevitable end. With a sinking heart he now began to wonder whether he had underestimated her vitality. What if, after all, she should recover? She was a sound, harmonious being, whom exposure and a simple strenuous life had only toughened. If any one could survive so terrible an accident, it would be she.