“I’m afraid he won’t, my dear. Shall you be able to stay?”
“Oh, yes. Cecil and I can’t be together now, and I’d rather be here than at Squires, though they’re kind enough in their way. If Ces is sent abroad, he’ll get leave first, and I should have to be free for that, but it won’t be yet.”
Lucian thought, although he did not say so, that she would be free before that.
The old pawnbroker sank very gradually.
The day before his death he remarked to his niece: “Flowers are a very foolish and extravagant custom. You will be so good as to put ‘No flowers, by request.’”
Rose knew better than to protest at the implication. “Very well, Uncle A.”
Presently he said: “You may tell your son that I am not the man to allow the sun to go down upon my wrath. I know my duty as a Christian, and I forgive him. But if you had brought him up in the fear of the Lord, this would never have come to pass.”
That night a change came over him that even to Rose’s eyes was unmistakable, and she sent a message to Lucian early in the following day.
Alfred Smith, his face very grey, lay propped up against his pillows, his fingers plucking at the sheet, his mouth oddly fallen in, and only his shrewd, indomitable old eyes seeming strangely alive still.
“It’s getting very dark,” he said.