In a few moments Lettie was up in the spare bedroom, arranging and adorning, and Rebecca was running with hot-water bottles, and hurrying down with clean bed-clothes. Lettie hastily appropriated my best brushes—which she had given me—and took the suit of pajamas of the thinnest, finest flannel—and discovered a new tooth-brush—and made selections from my shirts and handkerchiefs and underclothing—and directed me which suit to lend him. Altogether I was astonished, and perhaps a trifle annoyed, at her extraordinary thoughtfulness and solicitude.
He came down to supper, bathed, brushed, and radiant. He ate heartily and seemed to emanate a warmth of physical comfort and pleasure. The colour was flushed again into his face, and he carried his body with the old independent, assertive air. I have never known the time when he looked handsomer, when he was more attractive. There was a certain warmth about him, a certain glow that enhanced his words, his laughter, his movements; he was the predominant person, and we felt a pleasure in his mere proximity. My mother, however, could not quite get rid of her stiffness, and soon after supper she rose, saying she would finish her letter in the next room, bidding him good-night, as she would probably not see him again. The cloud of this little coolness was the thinnest and most transitory. He talked and laughed more gaily than ever, and was ostentatious in his movements, throwing back his head, taking little attitudes which displayed the broad firmness of his breast, the grace of his well-trained physique. I left them at the piano; he was sitting pretending to play, and looking up all the while at her, who stood with her hand on his shoulder.
In the morning he was up early, by six o’clock downstairs and attending to the car. When I got down I found him very busy, and very quiet.
“I know I’m a beastly nuisance,” he said, “but I must get off early.”
Rebecca came and prepared breakfast, which we two ate alone. He was remarkably dull and wordless.
“It’s a wonder Lettie hasn’t got up to have breakfast with you—she’s such a one for raving about the perfection of the early morning—it’s purity and promises and so forth,” I said.
He broke his bread nervously, and drank some coffee as if he were agitated, making noises in his throat as he swallowed.
“It’s too early for her, I should think,” he replied, wiping his moustache hurriedly. Yet he seemed to listen for her. Lettie’s bedroom was over the study, where Rebecca had laid breakfast, and he listened now and again, holding his knife and fork suspended in their action. Then he went on with his meal again.
When he was laying down his serviette, the door opened. He pulled himself together, and turned round sharply. It was mother. When she spoke to him, his face twitched with a little frown, half of relief, half of disappointment.
“I must be going now,” he said—“thank you very much—Mother.”