‘My dear!’ said Albinia, ‘don’t you know that if a royal tiger were to eat up your cousin John in India, the Drurys would say Mrs. Kendal always let the tigers run about loose! Nor am I sure that your faults are not my fault. I helped you to be more exclusive and intolerant, and I am sure I tried your temper, when I did not know what was the matter with you—’
‘No—no,’ said the choked voice. It would have been an immense comfort to cry, or even to be able to return the kiss; but she was a great deal too wretched to be capable of any demonstration; physically exhausted by being driven about by Maurice; mentally worn out by the attempts to be amiable, which had degenerated into wrangling, full of remorse for having made light of her brother’s illness, and, for that reason, persuaded that she was to be punished by seeing it become fatal. Not a word of all this did she say, but, dejected and silent, she spent the evening in a lonely corner of the drawing-room, while her brother, in the full pleasure of returning home, and greatly enjoying his invalid privileges, was discussing the projected improvements.
Talking at last brought back his cough with real violence, and he was sent to bed; Albinia went up with him to see that his fire burnt. He set Mr. Ferrars’s drawing of the alms-houses over his mantelshelf. ‘I shall nail it up to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I always wanted a picture here, and that’s a jolly one to look to.’
‘It would be a beautiful beginning,’ she said. ‘I think your life would go the better for it, Gibbie.’
‘I suppose old nurse would be too grand for one,’ he said, ‘but I should like to have her so near! And you must mind and keep old Mrs. Baker out of the Union for it. And that famous old blind sailor! I shall put him up a bench to sit in the sun, and spin his yarns on, and tell him to think himself at Greenwich.’
Albinia went down, only afraid that his being so very good was a dangerous symptom.
Sophy was far from well in the morning, and Albinia kept her upstairs, and sent her godfather to make her a visit. He always did her good; he knew how to probe deeply, and help her to speak, and he gave her advice with more experience than his sister, and more encouragement than her father.
Sophy said little, but her eyes had a softened look.
‘One good thing about Sophy,’ said he afterwards to his sister, ‘is, that she will never talk her feelings to death.’
‘That reserve is my great pain. I don’t get at the real being once in six months.’