When they reached home, she begged him to go at once to bed, hoping thus to defer the meeting; but he would not hear of doing so; and her only good augury was that his looks were pale, languid, and subdued, rather than flushed and excited. Miss Fennimore was in the hall, and he went towards her, saying, in a friendly tone, ‘So, Miss Fennimore, you have heard that this unlucky child has given us a fright for nothing.’
The voice in which she assented was hoarse and scarcely audible, and she looked as if twenty years had passed over her head.
‘It was all owing to your promptitude,’ said Mervyn; ‘a capital thought that telegram.’
‘I am glad,’ said Miss Fennimore; ‘but I do not lose sight of my own negligence. It convinces me that I am utterly unfit for the charge I assumed. I shall leave your sisters as soon as new plans can be formed.’
‘Why, I’ll be bound none of your pupils ever played you such a trick before!’
Miss Fennimore only looked as if this convinced her the more; but it was no time for the argument, and Phœbe caressingly persuaded her to come into the library and drink coffee with them, judging rightly that she had tasted nothing since morning.
Afterwards Phœbe induced Mervyn to lie on the sofa, and having made every preparation for the travellers, she sat down to wait. She could not read, she could not work; she felt that tranquillity was needful for her brother, and had learnt already the soothing effect of absolute repose. Indeed, one of the first tokens by which Miss Fennimore had perceived character in Phœbe was her faculty of being still. Only that which has substance can be motionless. There she sat in the lamplight, her head drooping, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes bent down, not drowsy, not abstracted, not rigid, but peaceful. Her brother lay in the shade, watching her with a half-fascinated gaze, as though a magnetic spell repressed all inclination to work himself into agitation.
The stillness became an effort at last, but it was resolutely preserved till the frost-bound gravel resounded with wheels. Phœbe rose, Mervyn started up, caught her hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Do not let him be hard on me, Phœbe,’ he said. ‘I could not bear it.’
She had little expected this. Her answer was a mute caress, and she hurried out, but in a tumult of feeling, retreated behind
the shelter of a pillar, and silently put her hand on Robert’s arm as he stepped out of the carriage.