Suddenly two arms closed about him, lifting him till his head rested on a throbbing bosom. They tightened till he felt himself swayed gently to and fro, while sobs, strong as his own, shook the rocking form which held him. As he lay extended, half along the ground and half in this sheltering care, there came to him something of that sort of peace in which his senses had been enveloped when he before had floated away into that child-kingdom from which he had had last night so rude an awakening. He waited wonderingly.
A hand pressed back the hair from his forehead.
“Don’t you know me, Reginald?”
He opened his eyes and saw black velvet. Was he dead? Was coffin couch so soft? Did angel arms so sweetly clasp poor mortal form within that narrow bound?
Not yet, at least. For bending over him he saw black orbs and cheeks tear-flushed. The velvet was a woman’s dress; and laces there rose and fell with the palpitations of a woman’s heart.
It was Mrs. Mancredo; and she held him tight, as if she would never let him go.
“I thought you were my mother,” he said.
“Ethel Daksha, do you mean?” she asked, after a strange pause.
“No-o-o, my own dear mother. I thought I was well dead at last; I wish I were. I have been so knocked about.”
Presently he said, out of the silence, in a good common-sense way: “I must be awfully sick, or you wouldn’t hold me—like this, as if—as if I were fainted, you know.”