He seemed to be haunted by the dread of infection if he set foot again in the house where his mother had suffered and died. More than this, he had put into his mind the morbid fear that he had in him already the seeds of this complaint which his mother had endured in silence for so long. He was not even present at the funeral.
At the time the coffin was being lowered into the ground Camilla and he were travelling in hot haste away from London, from England, from the mere possibility of breathing the air the poor dead woman had breathed.
"This will be the beginning of the end," Caroline said to herself. "Her eyes may be blinded for a little while, and he may attempt to tyrannize through this power he has over her now, but Camilla is not his mother. She will tire so soon, and his selfishness has no limits."
She was sitting out in the garden alone. There was a moon, and the world was wrapped about in the hush of the summer night.
The children were asleep. They had been in a great excitement all day because it had suddenly been decided that there was to be a departure from the country to the sea.
Mrs. Brenton had expected to have relinquished her little charges to the care of their mother, but this was now postponed indefinitely.
The note Camilla had scribbled just before leaving London had touched Agnes Brenton almost in the old way.
She wrote so lovingly. One could see that her heart yearned for her children, and yet that she could not separate herself from this new tie.
She burdened both Mrs. Brenton and Caroline with all sorts of charges for her two little ones; above all, she entreated them pathetically to keep her always vividly in front of her children's eyes.
"If I did not know that they were so safe with you, that they were put completely out of the reach of Ned's people, I should never be able to leave them."