She waited a moment before she answered him, and he knew from her face that his words had touched the depths of her heart. "I promise you that for Letty's sake I will do the impossible," she answered.
She gave him her hand, and he clasped it over the head of the child. It was one of those rare moments of perfect understanding and sympathy—of a mental harmony beside which all emotional rapture appears trivial and commonplace. He was aware of no appeal to his senses—life had taught him the futility of all purely physical charm—and the hand that touched Caroline's was as gentle and as firm as it had been when it rested on Letty's head. Here was a woman who had met life and conquered it, who could be trusted, he felt, to fight to the death to keep her spirit inviolate.
"Only one thing will take me away from Letty," she said. "If we send an army and the country calls me."
"That one thing is the only thing?"
"The only thing unless," she laughed as if she were suggesting an incredible event, "unless you or Mrs. Blackburn should send me away!"
To her surprise the ridiculous jest confused him. "Take care of Letty," he responded quickly; and then, as they reached the porch, he dropped the child's hand, and went up the steps and into the house.
In the library, by one of the windows which looked out on the terrace and the sunset, Colonel Ashburton was reading the afternoon paper, and as Blackburn entered, he rose and came over to the fireplace.
"I was a little ahead of you, so I made myself at home, as you see," he observed, with his manner of antiquated formality. In the dim light his hair made a silvery halo above his blanched features, and it occurred to Blackburn that he had never seen him look quite so distinguished and detached from his age.
"If I'd known you were coming, I should have arranged to get here earlier."
"I didn't know it myself until it was too late to telephone you at the works." There was an unnatural constraint in his voice, and from the moment of his entrance, Blackburn had surmised that the Colonel's visit was not a casual one. The war news might have brought him; but it was not likely that he would have found the war news either disconcerting or embarrassing.