Jeannie drew her chair a little nearer to the window-seat, in which Lady Nottingham had taken her place after the catastrophe of the hot water.
"I know. He told me he was coming to Bray to-day."
"Oh, he met you at Victoria?" she asked.
"No, dear; a little further down the line—at Dover, in fact. Yes, Alice, his was the first face I saw as we came alongside. And how my heart went out to him! What a good homecoming it has been, and how absolutely unworthy I feel of it! You have no idea how I used to rebel and complain in—in those past years, wondering what I had done to have my life so spoilt. Spoilt! Yes, that was the word I used to myself, and all the time this was coming nearer."
"Tell me more, dear."
"About him?" asked Jeannie.
"About him and you."
"Well, all the autumn I was on the Italian lakes. Oh, Alice, such dreadful months, and all the more dreadful because of the maddening beauty of the place. I looked at it. I knew it was all there, but I never saw it; it never went inside me, or went to make part of me. I was very sleepless all that time, and depressed with a blackness of despair. And as I got stronger in physical health, the depression seemed more unbearable, because, in all probability, so many years lay before me, and nothing in life seemed the least worth while. I often thought of you, and often—every day—of Daisy, longing, in a way, to see you both, but knowing that it would be no use if I did, for you would have been to me like the corpses, the husks of what I loved once. And I did not see any possibility of getting better or of getting out of this tomb-like darkness. It was like being buried alive, and getting more alive from week to week, so that I grew more and more conscious of how black the tomb was. Every now and then the pall used to lift a little, and that, I think, was the worst of all."
Lady Nottingham laid her plump, comfortable hand on Jeannie's.
"You poor darling!" she said. "And you would not let either Daisy or me come to you. Why did you not?"