She was sitting with clasped hands, and there was a look in her eyes in the swift upglancing that he could not fathom. So he waited for her to give him leave.
"Is it about Mr. Lansdale?" she asked.
"Yes. I was with him up to the last, and I thought that—that you might like to know what I can tell you."
She gave him liberty, and he told the story of the jaunt afield, dwelling chiefly on the day-to-day improvement in Lansdale's health, and stumbling a little when he came to speak of their last evening together.
"It was a hard blow for me," he said, at the end of it, and his voice was low and unsteady with emotion. "You know what had gone before—what I had lost and couldn't regain; and having failed at all points I had hoped to succeed in this: to bring him back to you sound and well. And when the possibility was fairly within reach it was taken out of my hands forever."
She was silent for a little time, fighting a sharp battle with reticence new-born and masterful. When she spoke it was as one who is constrained to walk with bare feet in a thorny path of frankness.
"To bring him back to me, you say; and in your letter to Dick you said that your sorrow was second only to mine. Was he not your friend, as well as mine?"
"I loved him," said Jeffard, simply; "but not as you did."
Again the struggle was upon her, and for a moment she thought that the sound of Dick's returning footsteps would be the signal of a blessed release. But the heart of sincerity would not be denied.