‘I will do what I can to persuade him when I call again. At present he is utterly worn out with grief and watching.’
‘Yes,’ said Avice, tears dimming her violet eyes. ‘Do you know, I did not think Jerome cared so much for my sister as it seems he does. I have done him an injustice.’
‘One naturally cares more or less for the person who is of most importance to one,’ replied Somerville, with a sweet and polished smile. He looked again at the child, whose dark eyes dwelt unconsciously and with the vague, meaningless gaze of infancy upon his face, and bending over it, he blessed it, slow and solemnly. ‘Since I baptised him, I may do that?’ he said.
‘Surely!’ replied Avice; and added, with a musing look, ‘Oh, if Nita could have but lived to see him like this, I think mere love would have given her courage to fight her way back to life again, and she would have struggled through.’
‘It may be so,’ replied Somerville, wishing her good-morning, and wondering within himself, as he went away, how long it would be–whether he should be still living, and still teaching, when that baby should be a student at Brentwood. ‘For that he will be,’ he said within himself. ‘What strides I have made in this affair! and how truly providential that the mother died at that precise time! Had she lived, we should never have had the child ... and if he marries again, we must see that the woman is a Catholic.’
CHAPTER XI.
GEFUNDEN.
When Wellfield left her, Sara sat down, trembling and unnerved. But that sensation was not of long duration. Soon she recovered, and was astonished at the sudden lightsomeness of heart which she felt. It was as if some thunder-cloud had burst, had discharged its flood of storm-rain, and dispersed, leaving a sky behind of a blue etherealised and idealised. It was not the effect she would have expected–the very reverse; it gladdened her as unexpected joy does gladden. She did not mention, even to Ellen, the visitor she had had. She had a plan in her mind, which came there spontaneously; she found it there; it gladdened her, thrilled her, filled her eyes with happy tears. She would make it the pretext for telling Rudolf that she loved him; she would so tell the incident of Jerome’s unlucky and reckless visit to her, that no doubt should remain in her husband’s mind as to what she meant, for as to speaking out the words to him which she had said with such boldness and composure to Wellfield–the very idea of it was impossible.