But this was not all. He was conscious—they were all conscious—of a mental cloud—a veil that seemed at times to wrap her away from them.
'Grace is changed. I don't know what to make of her. But I wish—oh! I do wish—that her mother would come,' Lucy cried out one morning when Tom asked her the usual question. Mrs. Lyster gave her a warning look, but she went on. 'Yes; I can't help it. I must speak. Something ought to be done.'
'What can be done, Lucy?' said Tom, whose face had turned perfectly grey.
'Don't mind Lucy. She is speaking wildly,' said Mrs. Lyster. 'She forgets—we all forget—that there are experiences which nothing but the healing hand of time—the slow passage of the years——'
She broke down, for her voice was choked with sobs.
'I know,' said Lucy penitently. 'But, dear Mrs. Lyster, you have suffered more than any of us, and you are not so strange, so reserved.'
'My dear child, I am much older than Grace, and I have the Irish elasticity of temper, I suppose. We can laugh with the tears on our faces; and I thank God for it. And now, like a darling, run off and look after the children, and leave the rajah to me.'
Lucy hesitated for a moment, looked at them with a curious half-mutinous expression in her face, and then turned away.
The other ladies had already left the summer-house, so that Mrs. Lyster and Tom were alone.
'Thank you,' he said, looking at her with strained, eager eyes.