“Oh, she is quite herself again. She goes with him everywhere. At the time I visited them they had just returned from making a sick-call together, twenty-five miles away.”
“That’s splendid! How happy she must be!”
“I think she is, very happy. She looks it, and talks it. She seems to feel that she is helping her husband in his work, and that he depends on her, and that fact gives her supreme joy.”
“I’m so glad!”
She put her handkerchief to her eyes and brushed away some tears that had gathered there. He saw the movement and he became silent. It was not his purpose nor his wish to arouse unhappy memories. She divined his thought, and, still eager for information, and fearful lest she might not receive it, she urged him impulsively.
“But tell me, Philip. Tell me everything. Was he glad to see you? Did he inquire about Christ Church? Does he feel bitterly toward us here?”
When he found that she really wanted to know he threw off his reserve.
“I think,” he replied, “that he was very glad to see me, though I took him by surprise. He is not a man who harbors resentments, and, now that it is all over, I felt that I could not afford to hold any grudge against him. That is why I went to see him. I told him so; we got back on the old footing, and he opened his heart to me. Yes, he asked after all of you back here. And he wanted to know about Christ Church. Do you remember how eagerly Philip Nolan, the Man without a Country, drank in, on his death bed, the news from home? Well, Mr. Farrar reminded me of Nolan. And I told him—I told him everything I knew or could think of.”
“Philip, you’re an angel.”
Again the handkerchief went to her eyes. Westgate, paying no heed to her exclamation, hurried on: