Wilfred was utterly overcome, and could only hurry away with another hand-squeeze. Lucian felt that the first of the final partings had come for him, and his breath came a little quickly.
“You’ll stay with me, Syl, won’t you?” he whispered.
“Why yes, of course, dear boy, that’s all settled, long ago. Now let me read you to sleep. Then, if Amethyst comes by and by, you will be able to see her.”
Amethyst was the bright spot in the sorrowful household. She was loving to Mrs Leigh, listening to her sorrow, and trying to give her all the care which after so long a strain she was beginning to need, and cheering the poor young girls as they grew too sorrowful to care for their usual amusements, while in her ways with Lucian she showed the most absolutely simple and unaffected tenderness, thinking of nothing but how to give him pleasure. That the pleasure was sometimes not easily known from pain, Lucian hid from all eyes but Sylvester’s keen ones, and, as he grew weaker, the inevitable longings mercifully sank away, or were bravely offered up with all the other sufferings of his failing life, and he took the joy as simply as it was given.
Lady Haredale, as usual, had adapted herself to circumstances. She took the greatest interest in “dear Lucian,” never grudged Amethyst’s intercourse with him, and, as she took occasion to tell Sylvester, “felt that the past was entirely blotted out.”
“She may,” Lucian had said bluntly, when this speech was reported to him, “but, as far as she is concerned, I don’t, and I never shall.”
Sylvester entirely concurred in this sentiment. If he detested any one on earth it was “my lady.” If she had ever found out that Una had refused Wilfred Jackson, she might have found it hard to forgive her, for money grew scarcer and scarcer, and while she smiled, and talked, and found little satisfactions in the amusements of hotel life, she did not know in the least what was to become of them all.
What Lord Haredale did, with their scanty means, it was easy to guess, and, though his wife could trust to some happy-go-lucky solution, his sister’s face grew more anxious every day.
Her greatest comfort was Carrie Carisbrooke, who transferred the incipient affection she had felt for Charles to all his family. She told Miss Haredale, that she hoped they would continue to live together either at Silverfold or at Cleverley, and she fully intended to put it in her chaperon’s power to give Tory the education she so much desired.
It was an undeserved return for the worldliness which had done her so great a disservice in trying to prop up a falling family with her fortune; but nevertheless, it made home and happiness for a very lonely girl, and so was its own reward.