Mrs. Walbridge sat still for several minutes, staring at the closed door, a strange look on her pale face. Presently she rose, the look in her eyes intensifying, almost solidifying, to one that would immeasurably have astonished her son if he could have seen it. Lighting a lamp, she went quickly upstairs to her little writing room, and, unfastening the buttons of her right sleeve, freeing her wrist, she took up her pen and began to write. Day had begun to light her square of sky when she crept down quietly to bed the next morning.
[CHAPTER XII]
A few days before Christmas Ferdinand Walbridge and his youngest daughter came home. It, was over two months since his wife had seen him, and she was very much struck by his look of health and youth.
"The sea air has done you a world of good, Ferdie," she commented gently.
He shot a quick glance at her out of marvellously cleared and unswollen eyes.
"Torquay agrees with me," he answered shortly; "always did."
Then he told her with genuine pleasure—for, like so many men with whom selfishness is almost a disease, he liked spending money, and was rather generous than otherwise—that he had made a good thing from a tip in copper, given him by a friend in Torquay.
"Sir John Barclay," he explained. "Grisel will have written you about him."