"Where we were?" she repeated, and there was, I thought, a listless note in her voice.
"Doesn't it make you happy?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm glad, glad the debt is gone, and now you'll look young and splendid again, won't you?"
"I'll try hard if you want me to."
"I do want you to," she answered, looking up at me with a smile.
The window was open, and a flood of sunshine fell on her pale brown hair, as it rested against the high arm of a chintz-covered sofa. Her hand, small and childlike, though less round and soft than it had been two years ago, caressed my cheek when I bent over her. She was well again, she was blooming, but the bloom was paler and more delicate, and there was a fragility in her appearance which was a new and disturbing sign of diminished strength. Would she ever, even when cradled in luxuries, recover her buoyant health, her sparkling vitality, I wondered.
The old Bland house, with the two great sycamores growing beside it, was for sale; and thinking to please Sally, I bought it without her knowledge, filled, as it was, with the Bland and Fairfax furniture, which had surrounded Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca. On the day some eight or nine months later that we moved into it the sycamores were budding, and there were faint spring scents in the air.
"This is where you belong. This is home to you," I said as we stood on the wide porch at the back, and looked down on the garden. "You will be happy here, dearest."
"Oh, yes, I'll be happy here."
"It won't be so hard for you when I'm obliged to leave you alone. I'm sorry I've had to be away so much of late. Have you been lonely?"