And the good lady stood there in the bow-window gazing through the rime-shaded panes away across the moor, over the green and mournful sea. Her clever gray eyes were half-closed, owing to a peculiar contraction of the eyelids—a little habit she indulged in when thinking in her brave cheery way of those things, my sisters, which you have greater leisure to meditate over than we men—of the happiness and the great joy we seem ever about to grasp, and which with melancholy invariability slips through our earthly fingers, fades from our earthly eyes. I sometimes think that when other women would have wept Mrs. Wylie contracted her eyelids, set her lips, and looked 'very courageous and of a good faith.'
Unconsciously she was looking away towards the east, to those mysterious lands, whence so many chapters of the world's history have been drawn.
CHAPTER X.
DIPLOMACY.
It happened that there were some warm balmy days towards the end of March, and on one of these Theodore Trist arrived at Wyvenwich. Mrs. Wylie and Brenda were on the little platform to meet him, and the elder lady, in her practical way, noted the lightness of his baggage and drew her own conclusions.
They walked to Wyl's Hall through the High Street of the little town, down towards the sea, up a steep path on the cliff, and finally across the moor. All green things were budding, tender shoots and bold weeds alike. Overhead the larks were singing in gladsome chorus. Side by side the three friends walked, and talked of ... the weather. I mention it because none of the three took much interest in the matter, as a rule, nor ever talked of it.
'Spring is upon us again,' Mrs. Wylie had said during the first pause.
'Yes,' answered Trist; 'this weather always makes me restless.'
'More so than usual?' inquired Brenda innocently.
Trist looked at her sideways.