CHAPTER XVI
Saul did not return to Fellbridge that evening with his mother and Grace. Mrs. Barham, indeed, urged him not to do so, seeing how ill he looked, and he yielded without a word. His mother enjoined him to rest, and to go to bed early, "for you look just fairly worn out, Saul."
And when they were in the train, she turned to Grace, with a deep sigh, and said,
"He has gotten back that ashy color which he had before he went abroad. And his cough; did you hear how he coughed? Oh, Miss Ballinger, I am so down-hearted about my only boy, the only one left!"
She turned her face away, but it was not to hide any tears in her stone-blue eyes. Her anxiety, her grief were far too deep for wailing.
Grace pressed silently the small gloved hand that lay on the poor mother's lap. She felt as though she were, in a measure, responsible for Saul's condition. With a word she could send him away to some sunny clime, where he might revive, as it seemed almost certain to her he would not do here. But she could never speak that word.
Grace had rarely found it so hard to be cheerful as this evening. When she looked at the handsome but rigid face of her reverend host, and thought of "Little Mother" confronted by some great sorrow, with no solace but in the stern Calvinism of her husband, the girl shivered. It was probably a difficult evening to all three. The minister, who had no special anxiety about his son, exerted himself to supply the young man's place, but he felt himself to be an inefficient substitute, in conversation with his English guest. As to "Little Mother," she did her duty bravely; but it made Grace's heart ache to look into those deep, sad eyes—sad, even when the lips smiled and she spoke lightly of indifferent matters.
When she went to her room that night, Grace sat down and wrote a letter. Its composition did not take her long; indeed, it may be said that every word of it had been burned into her brain many months ago. She had desired exceedingly, at that time, to write to Ivor Lawrence, and she had refrained. Again in New York, after Mordaunt had broached the subject once more, the impulse to tell the friend, who was laboring under a foul aspersion, how deeply she felt for him had been strong; but still, moved by her brother's indignant remonstrance, she bad forborne. And now, it was strange, but Saul's few words, and the reproach of her pusillanimity they carried with them, had upset all this. The forcible way in which he had confirmed her instinct—and, like most women, she believed in her instincts—decided her.
This is what she wrote:
"Fellbridge, Mass., U. S.,