“How glad our dear Mrs. Witherby must be. I know what joy she feels. She is always more interested in others than in her own affairs.”
Mrs. Witherby hunted for her handkerchief, sniffling with unexpected emotion, and faltered:
“Her father was my favourite brother—my favourite.”
“And now you’ll all meet at breakfast as dear friends, and not strangers. But that is the spirit of Roseborough. Jack, perhaps you’ll find that all your wandering has only led you safely home. Somewhere, dear boy, even you must find your end-of-journeying. You remember the words: ‘Dear Roseborough, to every seeker of harmony thou art his end-of-journeying; to every wanderer, his home’?”
“My ‘end-of-journeying’!” he repeated, and looked at Rosamond, who had stolen away from the room to the verandah.
The golden light of the risen sun filled the open spaces of the garden and sought for chinks and window holes in the great elms, through which to send its warm yellow shafts into Villa Rose. Falcon went out to the railing, and looked down. The sun was splashing all the hillside with glory; and the river flowed like golden glass.
Mrs. Witherby was repeating something she had evolved, at last, as the perfect explanation of “all our little mistakes last night.”
“If only it hadn’t happened in the night! I’m sure I would never have thought—I’m the last person to.... But when things happen in the night!”
Mrs. Lee had joined her boy on the verandah. She pointed to the sunlight that now burst through the elms in a dozen places.
“But the night is past,” she said comfortingly.