“I do not feel well this morning,” she answered; “the letter was from a friend of other days.” She stumbled to her feet in a dazed sort of way, and hurried out of the house.
There was a touch of chill in the air, and the roses drooped; only wild-flower scents greeted her as she stopped and leaned against the matted honeysuckle arch by the garden gate. She searched the vine-tangle through, without finding one single blooming spray. This was Saturday; no school to-day. She felt a vague sense of relief in the thought, but what should she do with her holiday. She had lost her usual spirits, she had forgotten to be brave. The letter, maybe, or the stranger guest, had made the pale color in her cheeks; the eyelids drooped heavily on the tear-wet face, and checked the songs that most days welled perpetually over unthinking lips.
She had never told of Robert’s treatment of her; of his cold leave-taking, his altered look, for her to remember always. She had been bearing it in silence. Bred to the nicest sense of honorable good faith, she had kept it alone. But to-day she was weakening; she was agitated, and in a condition of feverish suspense and changeful mind.
Sunrays shone upon her hair as she leaned against the arch, her head bowed on her clasped hands, her slender figure shaken with grief. She heard voices and quick treading on the gravel walk.
“You haven’t aged at all, though it has been eleven years since I was here.”
“Life goes fairly smooth with me; and you have been well, I trust.” She knew that was the Major’s voice, and in the lightning flash of her unerring woman’s instinct she knew the other, as he said:
“I have been blessed with sound body, but life has passed roughly with me since my mother died. You have heard it?”
“Yes.”
“She made home so dear to my boyhood; so real to my after years. She was ever burning there a holy beacon, under whose guidance I always came to a haven and to a refuge.”