To be sure, poor Nelly had known of that journey to Tilbury just as well as if she had accompanied him. The only thing she did not know was that he had failed to see Captain Langrishe. And his silence—the looks of tender pity he sent her when he thought he was unobserved, what could they mean but that his mediation had been in vain? For some strange, cruel reason, although he loved her and he must know he was breaking her heart, her lover would have none of her. Even the knowledge that he loved her ceased to be an anodyne in those days.
Everyone was so good to her. She seemed to have found a way to the Dowager's arid heart, as her own son had not. The Dowager seemed dimly aware that Nelly was suffering in some way, and was tender to her. She came to the General with a proposal. Why should they not all go abroad together and escape the east winds of spring? The General leaped at it. Once get Nelly abroad and she would know nothing of what was happening on the Indian frontier. He, and Nelly and the Dowager. He had not imagined the Dowager in such a party—yet, he shrank from the prolonged tête-à-tête with Nell which the trip would have been without the Dowager's presence. Robin would join them at Easter. They could all travel home together.
There was a time of bustle when Nelly and the Dowager were getting their travelling outfits. A spark of excitement, of anticipation, lit up Nelly's sad eyes. The General could have hugged the Dowager.
"Your dear father," the Dowager said to Nelly one day, "how calm he grows as he turns round to old age! I see in him more and more the brother my dear Gerald looked up to and reverenced."
The peacefulness, the good understanding, had their effect, too, on Nelly. It was good that those she loved should dwell together in amity. She was in that state that she could not have endured sharpness or rancour.
Only Pat shook his head disapprovingly.
"If he goes on like this," he said, "he'll be goin' to Heaven before his time. I'd a deal sooner hear him grumblin' about her Ladyship as he used to do. It 'ud be more natural-like, so it would. Why would we be callin' him 'Old Blood and Thunder' if 'twas to be like an image he was? Och, the ould times were ever the best!"
"He'll come to himself yet," said Bridget more hopefully.