“I heard that you were ill; I wanted to see for myself,” she faltered.
“I am not ill, and I have not been ill. You were misinformed.”
“I was told you were unhappy.”
“Did you require to be told that? You did not expect to hear that I was particularly happy, I suppose? At my age men have forgotten how to forget.”
“It would be such a relief to my mind if you could find new occupations, new interests, as I hope to do by and by—a wider horizon. You are so clever. You have so many gifts, and it is a pity to bury them all here.”
“My heart is buried here,” he answered, looking down at the grave.
“Your heart, yes; but you might find work for your mind—a noble career before you—in politics, in philanthropy.”
“I am not ambitious, and I am too old to adapt myself to a new life. I prefer to live as I am living. Enderby is my hermitage. It suits me well enough.”
There was a silence after this—a silence of despair. Mildred knelt on the dewy grass, and bent herself over the marble cross, and kissed the cold stone. She could reach no nearer than that marble to the child she loved. Her lips lingered there. Her heart ached with a dull pain, and she felt the utter hopelessness of her life more keenly than she had felt it yet. If she could but die there, at his feet, and make an end!
She rose after some minutes. Her husband’s attitude was unchanged; but he looked at her now, for the first time, with a direct and earnest gaze.