‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘Edmund has been out of the way of such things, but he consented, you know.’ Then as her eyes grew liquid, ‘A duck pond is a funny subject for sentiment, but oh! if you knew what that place has been to my imagination from the first, and how the wreaths of mist have wound themselves into spectres in my dreams, and stretched out white shrouds now for one, now for the other!’ and she shuddered.
‘And you have gone through all this and never spoken. No wonder your nerves and spirits were tried.’
‘I did speak at first,’ said Albinia; ‘but I thought Edmund did not hear, or thought it nonsense, and so did I at times. But you see he did attend; he always does, you see, at the right time. It was only my impatience.’
‘I suspect Maurice and John Smith had more to do with it,’ said Winifred.
‘Well, we wont quarrel about that,’ said Albinia. ‘I only know that whoever brought it about has taken the heaviest weight off my mind that has been there yet.’
In truth, the terror, half real, half imaginary, had been a sorer burthen than all the positive cares for those unruly children, or their silent, melancholy father; and the relief told in all ways—above all, in the peace with which she began to regard her child. Still she would provoke Winifred by bestowing all her gratitude on Mr. Kendal, who began to be persuaded that he had made an heroic exertion.
Winifred had been somewhat scandalized by discovering Albinia’s deficiencies in the furniture development. She was too active and stirring, and too fond of out-of-door occupation, to regard interior decoration as one of the domestic graces, ‘her nest was rather that of the ostrich than the chaffinch,’ as Winifred told her on the discovery that her morning-room had been used for no other purpose than as a deposit for all the books, wedding presents, lumber, etc., which she had never had leisure to arrange.
‘You might be more civil,’ answered Albinia. ‘Remember that the ringdove never made half such a fuss about her nest as the magpie.’
‘Well, I am glad you have found some likeness in yourself to a dove,’ rejoined Winifred.
Mrs. Ferrars set vigorously to work with Lucy, and rendered the room so pretty and pleasant, that Lucy pronounced that it must be called nothing but the boudoir, for it was a perfect little bijou.