Kate durst not speak to him, but she watched him under her eyelashes, and noticed how he presently laid down his pen, and gave a long, heavy, sad sigh, such as she had never heard when his wife was present; then sat musing, looking fixedly at the grey window; till, rousing himself with another such sigh, he seemed to force himself to go on writing, but paused again, as if he were so wearied and oppressed that he could hardly bear it.
It gave Kate a great awe of him, partly because a little girl in a book would have gone up, slid her hand into his, and kissed him; but she could nearly as soon have slid her hand into a lion’s; and she was right, it would have been very obtrusive.
Some little time had passed before there was an opening of the door, and the announcement, “Lord de la Poer.”
Up started Kate, but she was quite lost in the greeting of the two friends; Lord de la Poer, with his eyes full of tears, wringing his friend’s hand, hardly able to speak, but just saying, “Dear Giles, I am glad to have you at home. How is she?”
“Wonderfully well,” said the Colonel, with the calm voice but the twitching face. “She is gone to see Mrs. Ducie, the mother of a lad in my regiment, who was wounded at the same time as Giles, and whom she nursed with him.”
“Is not it very trying?”
“Nothing that is a kindness ever is trying to Emily,” he said, and his voice did tremble this time.
Kate had quietly re-seated herself in her chair. She felt that it was no moment to thrust herself in; nor did she feel herself aggrieved, even though unnoticed by such a favourite friend. Something in the whole spirit of the day had made her only sensible that she was a little girl, and quite forgot that she was a Countess.
The friends were much too intent on one another to think of her, as she sat in the recess of the window, their backs to her. They drew their chairs close to the fire, and began to talk, bending down together; and Kate felt sure, that as her uncle at least knew she was there, she need not interrupt. Besides, what they spoke of was what she had longed to hear, and would never have dared to ask. Lord de la Poer had been like a father to his friend’s two sons when they were left in England; and now the Colonel was telling him—as, perhaps, he could have told no one else—about their brave spirit, and especially of Giles’s patience and resolution through his lingering illness; how he had been entirely unselfish in entreating that anything might happen rather than that his father should resign his post; but though longing to be with his parents, and desponding as to his chance of recovery, had resigned himself in patience to whatever might be thought right; and how through the last sudden accession of illness brought on by the journey, his sole thought had been for his parents.
“And she has borne up!” said Lord de la Poer.