"But what?"
"She needs patience. It is perhaps hard on her—"
"Hard on her! It is hard on me, I think."
"Yes, yes, my dear, I know that. I only mean—"
Colonel Desmond scarcely knew what he meant. His heart was bleeding for the wounds inflicted by that little termagant upstairs upon this gentle woman who continued to sit with her handkerchief to her eyes. He was longing to reconcile them, and yet he was dimly conscious that in his blundering man fashion he was but setting them farther apart.
"It is hard, I confess," murmured Mrs. Desmond after a pause. "If Helen were my own child could I care more for her welfare? I sacrifice my leisure, my inclinations—" her voice broke here, and once more the handkerchief was applied.
"My dear wife," began the colonel; but she motioned him to be silent.
"You little know what I have to endure from that child," she went on. "I do not wish you to know. She is your child, and I shall do my duty by her. But to be blamed by you is more than I can bear."
"I blame you, my dear Margaret! Come, you cannot mean that. Do you think that I don't feel grateful to you for your patience and for your goodness to me, to—to us every day. Why, you have only been away four-and-twenty hours, and the house felt like a wilderness. That was what drove me out, I think."
The colonel knelt down beside his wife and took her hand. She suffered herself to be consoled, and presently withdrew her handkerchief from her eyes and smiled.