But he did not look long; while Margaret stood there, his eyes dropped to the figure at his feet. This was not surprising. There was nothing in the sky that could approach it.
CHAPTER XIII.
Mrs. Thorne improved. She was still very weak, confined to her bed, and the cough continued at intervals to rack her wasted frame. But there was now no fever; she slept through the nights; she had always been so delicate in appearance that she did not seem much more fragile now. These at least were the assertions of her Gracias friends; her Gracias friends were determined to believe that time and good nursing would restore her. The nursing they attended to themselves, and with devoted care, one succeeding the other day after day. Mrs. Thorne appreciated their good offices; but she no longer concealed her preference for the companionship, whenever it was to be obtained, of Margaret Harold.
"I have pretended so long!" she said to Margaret, when they were alone together. "I am so tired of pretending! and with you I can be myself. It isn't really necessary now to be any one else—now that I shall so soon have to go; but I have got into such a habit of it with the others that I shouldn't know how to stop. With you I can talk freely, and you are the only one."
"So long as it doesn't tire you," Margaret answered.
"It tires me a great deal more to be silent," responded Mrs. Thorne.
Often, therefore, when Margaret came down to East Angels, Mrs. Thorne would send Garda into the open air to stroll about, or rest under the rose-tree, and then, while Madam Ruiz, or Mrs. Carew, or whoever happened to be in attendance, was sleeping to make up for the broken rest of the coming night, she would talk to her northern friend, talk with an openness which was in itself a sign that the many cautions of a peculiarly cautious life were drawing to a close. One reason for this freedom was that in spite of the apparent improvement, there were no illusions between these two regarding the hoped-for recovery. "We are northerners, Margaret, and we know," Mrs. Thorne had said one day, when Margaret had raised her so that she could cough with less difficulty. "Consumption—our kind—these southerners cannot grasp!" She did not wish to die, poor woman; she clung to life with desperation; nevertheless, she found a momentary satisfaction in a community of feeling with Margaret over this southern lack.
"Oh, these southern lacks—how Garda would have been part of them!" she went on. "If I had had to leave her here, if you had not promised to take her, how inevitably she would have been sunk in them, lost in them! she would never have got out. Oh! I so hate and loathe it all—the idle, unrealizing, contented life of this tiresome, idle coast. They amounted to something once, perhaps; but their day is over, and will never come back. They don't know it; you couldn't make them believe it even if you should try. That is what makes you rage—they're so completely mistaken and so completely satisfied! Every idea they have is directly contrary to all the principles of the government under which they exist But what is that to them? They think themselves superior to the government. I'm not exaggerating, it's really true; I can speak from experience after my life with that"—she paused, then chose her word clearly—"with that devilish Old Madam!"
It seemed to Margaret as if this poor exile were imbibing a few last draughts of vitality from the satisfaction which even this late expression of her real belief gave her; she had been silent so long!