Joyce turns her face to her brother-in-law and smiles in a little pleased way. She has been so grave of late that they welcome a smile from her now at any time, and even court k. The pretty lips, erstwhile so prone to laughter, are now too serious by far. When, therefore, Monkton or his wife go out of their way to gain a pleased glance from her and succeed, both feel as if they had achieved a victory.
"Why have they offered us a separate establishment? Was there no room for us in their own house?" asks Mrs. Monkton presently.
"I dare say they thought we should be happier, so—in a place of our own."
"Well, I dare say we shall." She pauses for a moment. "Why are they in town now—at this time of year? Why are they not in their country house?"
"Ah! that is a last thorn in their flesh," says Monkton, with a quick sigh. "They have had to let the old place to pay my brother's debts. He is always a trouble to them. This last letter points to greater trouble still."
"And in their trouble they have turned to you—to the little grandchildren," says Joyce, softly. "One can understand it."
"Oh, yes. Oh, you should have told me," says Barbara, flushing as if with pain. "I am the hardest person alive, I think. You think it?" looking directly at her husband.
"I think only one thing of you," says Mr. Monkton, rising from the breakfast table with a slight laugh. "It is what I have always thought, that you are the dearest and loveliest thing on earth." The bantering air he throws into this speech does not entirely deprive it of the truthful tenderness that formed it. "There," says he, "that ought to take the gloom off the brow of any well-regulated woman, coming as it does from an eight-year-old husband."
"Oh, you must be older than that," says she, at which they all laugh together.
"You are wise to go, Barbara," says Joyce, now in a livelier way, as if that last quick, unexpected feeling of amusement has roused her to a sharper sense of life. "If once they see you!—No, you mustn't put up your shoulder like that—I tell you, if once they looked at you, they would feel the measure of their folly."