Mary could gather from the last words a sense he did not consciously put into them. She had her own explanation of her brother’s dreadful state. Dreadful it was, no less. His face was wasted as if by consumption. He scarcely ate enough to support life. His sleeplessness had become a disease. He never smiled, and spoke for the most part in a weary, listless tone. Mary believed that there was death in his hands.
There came the day for leave-taking; he was to go to her—Isabel wrote—in the afternoon, and she would be at home to no one else.
“You are glad that I am going?” she said.
“Yes, I am glad. I had rather think of you among the fields.”
“Ada is going with me, to stay for a week or two. She proposed it herself; I was surprised.”
“But she had not left you finally?”
“I quite believed she had.”
They talked without any kind of emotion, but each avoided the other’s eyes. Kingcote had his usual look of illness and fatigue; Isabel was not without signs that the season had been a little too much for her strength.
“I am going to Scotland in a fortnight,” she mentioned. “Of course you shall have my address. Then in October you will come down some day and see me, will you not?”
“It is better that I should promise nothing. I can’t say where I may be in October.”