She moved with that restrained emotion that he had seen in her when he had first met her. She was some great force held in check, some fire that blazed but must be hidden from the world, and as she bent over her mother and kissed her the embrace had in it something of passionate protest; both women seemed to assert in it their right to quite another sort of life.
He saw that his moment with Mrs. Craven had passed. That fire, that humanity had gone from her and she lay back now on her sofa with the faint waxen lids closed upon her eyes, her hands thinly folded, almost a dead woman.
Margaret kissed her again—now softly and gently, and Olva went with her from the room.
3
He was prepared to find that Rupert had told her everything. He thought that he saw in the gravity and sadness of her manner, and also in the silence that she seemed deliberately at first to place between them, that she was waiting for the right moment to break it to him. He felt that she would ask him gravely and with great kindness, but that, in the answer that he would give her, it must be all over . . . the end. The pursuit would be concluded.
Then suddenly in the way that she looked at him he knew that she had been told nothing.
"I'm afraid that mother is very unwell. I'm afraid that you must have found her so."
"If she could get away—-" he began.
"Ah! if we could all get away! If only we could! But we have talked of that before. It is quite impossible. And, even if we could (and how glad I should be!), I do not know that it would help mother. It is Rupert that is breaking her heart!"
"Rupert!"