Mrs. Gregory looks down with a start. In her right hand is a bulky packet, which she is holding with a curious tension pressed tightly against her side.
'This!' she exclaims. 'Oh no, thank you! It is not in the least heavy. I have promised, besides, to give it into no hands but my son's.'
'Bless me, ma'am, do you really mean to say so?' cries Mrs. Stevens, who is astonished to find her offer treated so seriously. 'But I only meant carrying it to the house. You look hard put to it to carry yourself to-night, if I may make so bold. My William and me was just saying this very evening as it might be, "If so be as Mr. Thomas don't come soon, there won't be much left of the missis for him to see." But it won't be long now, as the saying is.'
'No, it won't be long now. I was just trying, when you came out, to reckon the time by his last letter. It seems to me that he ought to have been here before this.'
At this very moment—they had reached the upper lawn and flower-garden—Mrs. Stevens, who was a little in front of her mistress, saw a hackney carriage pull up at the gate. She turned round. 'Ma'am! ma'am!' she cried, 'there's some one come. Don't faint, like a dear! William, I say, William, run to the gate! I'll go through the house and open the hall-door.'
There followed a few moments of agonising suspense, and then, how it came about Mrs. Gregory never knew, she found herself lying in her son's arms, helpless as a child, with his warm kisses raining upon her cheeks and lips and brow.
Her first thought, strange as it may seem, was not of him, but of the packet which she had been carrying, and which Mrs. Stevens had picked up from the ground when in that intoxicating moment her senses had deserted her. Drawing herself away from her son, she made a rapid sign that it should be given to her, and when Mrs. Stevens obeyed she hid it in her mantilla. This manœuvre was unnoticed by Tom, all whose thoughts were of her.
'So I have frightened you, little mother!' he said. 'And yet I sent a message. Didn't you receive it? It should have arrived early in the day.'
'I was out very likely. I took lunch with Lady Winter, and then I came on here. But I am not sorry. I wanted to see you first here, dear; here, where we have been so happy. I thought you would be more likely to forgive me and think kindly of me.'
'Dearest mother, you are dreaming. Forgive! What have I to forgive? Are you tormenting yourself because you could not make up your mind to tell me by word of mouth what you told me by letter? But that is the most natural thing in the world to me. And as to the days that have gone, we are to have better ones, little mother, much—much better. Let me look at you. Do you know that you have changed?'