"Oh, and, mother, look!" she exclaimed eagerly. "I was going to tell you. I discovered it last Sunday. You can see the Denby House from here. Did you know it? It's so near dark now, it isn't very clear, but there's a light in the library windows, and others upstairs, too. See? Right through there at the left of that dark clump of trees, set in the middle of that open space. That's the lawn, and you can just make out the tall white pillars of the veranda. See?"
"Oh, yes, I see. Yes, so you can, can't you?"
Helen's voice was light and cheery, and carefully impersonal, carrying no hint of her inward tumult, for which she was devoutly thankful.
In spite of her high expectations, Betty came from Denby House the next afternoon with pouting lips.
"He's just exactly the same as ever, only more so, if anything," she complained to her mother. "He dictated his letters, then for an hour, I think, he just sat at his desk doing nothing, with his hand shielding his eyes. Twice, though, I caught him looking at me. But his eyes weren't kind and—and human, as they were yesterday. They were their usual little bits of cold steel. He went off then to his office at the Works (he said he was going there), and he never came home even to luncheon. I didn't have half work enough to do, and—and the cabinets were locked. I tried them. At four he came in, signed the letters, said good-afternoon and stalked upstairs. And that's the last I saw of him."
Nightly, after this, for a time, Betty gave forth what she called the "latest bulletin concerning the patient":—
"No change."
"Sat up and took notice."
"Slight rise in temper."
"Dull and listless."