‘Better than ever. Nothing like bracing air. Oh! I am glad you brought him’ indicating the other room, ‘down at once; she might have had a naughty fit, and tormented herself and everybody.’
‘You think it will be all right?’ said Frank
anxiously. ‘It was a venture, but when he heard that she was at the Dower House, there was no holding him. He thinks she has as much to forgive as he has.’
‘You wrote something of that—though the actual misery and accident were no fault of his, poor fellow, and yet—yet all that self-acted and re-acted on one another, and did each other harm,’ said Adela.
‘Yes,’ said Frank; ‘harm that he only fully understood gradually, after he had burst away from it all in the shock, and was living a very different life with his little sister, and afterwards with her husband, a thoroughly good man.’
‘To whom you have trusted your nephew?’
‘Entirely. Herbert is very happy there, much more so than ever before, useful and able to follow his natural bent.’
‘I am very glad he will do well there.’
A sudden interruption here came on them in the shape of Amice, who had not been guarded against. She flew into the room in a fright, exclaiming—
‘Mamma, mamma, there’s a strange man like a black bear in the drawing-room, and he has got his arm round Aunt Bertha’s waist.’