After a week of convalescence, she said one morning,—
“Couldn’t we go away somewhere? I don’t think I shall ever be quite well staying here.”
“It’s wretched weather,” replied her husband.
“Oh, but there are places where it wouldn’t be like this. You don’t mind the expense, do you, Edmund?”
“Expense? Not I, indeed! But—were you thinking of abroad?”
She looked at him with eyes that had suddenly brightened.
“Oh! would it be possible? People do go out of England in the winter.”
Widdowson plucked at his grizzled beard and fingered his watch-chain. It was a temptation. Why not take her away to some place where only foreigners and strangers would be about them? Yet the enterprise alarmed him.
“I have never been out of England,” he said, with misgiving.
“All the more reason why we should go. I think Miss Barfoot could advise us about it. She has been abroad, I know, and she has so many friends.”