Salome looked round in bewilderment, not seeing to what Juliet's words referred. When she understood, it was too late. Drawn by the attraction of its radiance, the moth swept too near to the centre of fierce heat, and the next moment with singed wings it lay writhing on the table in mortal anguish, to which Salome mercifully put a speedy end. Juliet had come to her sister's side, and she now took up the dead creature and gazed with troubled eyes at the lovely spotted wings which the flame had marred.
"What a pity!" she said. "It was such a beauty. Oh, you poor silly thing, why did you go so near?"
Then, as much to her surprise as to that of the others, a sob escaped her. She turned and hurried from the room.
"Whatever can have come to Juliet that she should weep over a dead moth?" exclaimed Hannah. "Something must have happened to put her out."
"She is overdone," said Mrs. Tracy. "I noticed when she came in that she seemed excessively tired. It is quite time she went away, for she needs a change. Juliet is not strong, although she appears to have so much life and spirit. She is highly strung and excitable, and such temperaments have ever more energy than strength. I only hope the change to Folkestone will be the right thing for her."
"You need not fear," said Hannah; "the air on that coast is splendid. It is sure to revive her, if she needs bracing."
Salome said nothing. She believed that the cause of the emotion Juliet had manifested lay deeper than her mother supposed. It had struck her before to-day that Juliet was not happy. She reproached herself for not understanding her young sister better. Now when it was too late, she regretted bitterly the wide breach she had suffered ever to yawn deeper and deeper between herself and Juliet, and which made it impossible for her at this juncture to approach Juliet with sympathy and counsel, when perhaps she needed both.
Juliet wrote to Dora Felgate the next morning, and busied herself with preparations for her departure on the following Tuesday. She found a good deal to do, and appeared to be in a state of bustle and excitement from morning till evening of each day which intervened, except on Sunday, when she complained of a headache, and did not go to church. A casual observer would have said that she was in high spirits at the prospect before her. Hannah quite thought so.
But Juliet's excitable, flighty manner could not deceive her mother. She saw that Juliet was not herself; but she hoped that the trouble was dependent on the condition of her nerves, and would soon be driven away by the strong sea breezes.
One afternoon Juliet, who had been out shopping, returned to the house accompanied by a small boy staggering beneath the weight of a huge flower-pot containing a fine palm.