“Why are you up so late, Bernard?” she asked. “I heard you moving, and feared you might be unwell.”
“I have been reading,” he replied. “I quite forgot that you were underneath. It’s too bad to wake you.”
“I have not been asleep. I am anxious about you. Won’t you go to bed?”
“To be sure I will. It’s later than I thought. You shan’t hear another sound.”
“But it’s not that I care about,” she urged. “I would rather sit with you, if you can’t rest.”
“No, no; there’s nothing to be anxious about. We shall wake the children if we talk so much. Be off and sleep, Mary.”
She went, with a heavy heart. She was much disturbed on her brother’s account.
To-night it was misery to him to have to go away with the others, without one word for himself. After walking to the end of the street, he came back and stood looking at the lighted windows. Presently the drawing-room became dark. He set out on his long journey to Highgate.
“Has it been a pleasant evening?” Mary asked. She liked to look at her brother in his evening dress; it gave her all manner of thoughts. At his entrance she had closed a folio volume of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons, which, in impatience at some unwholesome little book she was bent over, Kingcote had put into her hands a few days ago. “At least read good English,” had been the accompanying remark.
In answer to her question he gave a weary, indifferent affirmative.