Rosa wondered if there really was anything in the theory which was held by some people, to the effect that sometimes a judgment followed hard upon the utterance of a thoughtless phrase. She wondered if the publicity in which Priscilla was now moving had been sent to her as a punishment for her impulsive words.
Perhaps it was the atmospheric envelope, so to speak, of this thought which remained hanging about her in the house and prevented her visit to her dear friend from being all that she expected it to be. It was of course a delightful reunion; but somehow Priscilla did not seem to be just the same as she had been long ago.
With these variations of visitors and with plenty to occupy her mind and her hands Priscilla found the weeks to go by rapidly enough. She took care to be constantly occupied, by undertaking the reorganization of the dairy in connection with the home farm, and she had no difficulty in reviving Jack’s interest in the scheme for introducing electric power for the lighting of the house and for the lightening of labour in whatever department of the household labour was employed. An expert on dynamos was summoned from Manchester, and his opinion bore out all that Priscilla had said to Jack on this interesting enterprise; and before a fortnight had passed the details of the scheme had been decided on and estimates were being prepared for the carrying out of the work.
In addition to her obvious duties Priscilla was making herself indispensable to Jack’s mother in her long and tedious illness, reading to her and sitting with her for hours every day. It was, however, when Jack was alone with his mother one evening that she laid her hand on his, saying:
“My dear boy, I had my fears at one time for the step you were taking; but now I can only thank you with all my heart for having given me a daughter after my own heart. I have, as you know, always longed for a daughter, and my longing is now fulfilled with a completeness that I never looked for. She is the best woman in the world, Jack—the best woman for you.”
“I hope that I shall be able to make her as happy as she has made me,” said he.
“Ah, that is the very point on which I wished to speak to you,” said the mother. “I wonder if you have noticed—-if you have thought that she is quite as happy as we could wish her to be. A shadow—no, not quite so much as a shadow, but still something—have I been alone in noticing it?—something like a shadow upon her now and then.”
Jack was slightly startled. He had taken good care that no newspaper containing an allusion to the “curious case” which was exciting the attention of all England and calling for immediate attention on the other side of the Atlantic as well, should get into his mother’s hands; but now that she was approaching convalescence, he knew that however vigilant he might be in this respect, an unlucky chance would make her aware of all that had happened since the beginning of the attack that had prostrated her. He had been living in dread of such a catastrophe all the previous week, and now he perceived that it was imminent. Priscilla had not been able to play her part so perfectly as to prevent the quick feeling—the motherly apprehension—of the elder lady from suggesting something to her.
“It would be the worst day of my life if any cloud were to come over her path,” he said. “I hope that if anything of the sort were to happen, it would only be a temporary thing—something that we should look back upon, wondering that it should ever have disturbed our peace.”
“What!” she cried. “You have noticed it?—there is something!—you know what it is?”