As he passed her, Caroline put out her hand and caught his arm feebly.
"Sir Samuel, you will not——" words failed her.
There was a pompous air about him as he answered that broken sentence.
"I will do nothing till I have seen you again. Will that please you?"
She could only bend her head. As he went heavily down the stairs her eyes closed again.
Like a blind, broken-down creature, she turned into the drawing-room once more, and as she fell into a chair she lay there inert, too prostrate to move or even to think consciously for a little while at least.
CHAPTER XV
The dark green blind flapped lazily to and fro against the lower part of the open window, letting in occasional streaks of golden light, and stirring the delicate fronds of the fern that, with a pot of heliotrope and some bowls of flowers, stood on the table at the foot of the bed.
Caroline lay and watched for those fugitive glimpses of sunshine and sun-bathed trees.