Ursula passed through the long, gray library, and, drawing a curtain, softly entered the old Baroness’s rose-garlanded sanctum.
Through the south turret window the sunlight lay in an amber bar. And, incased in the clear gold, like a fly, sat the little black Dowager, surrounded by her papers, writing with the serene concentration of a well-defined literary task. She looked up across her glasses, pen in hand.
“I am busy,” she said, her tone full of mild annoyance. She was always busy, the more so when Ursula disturbed her—endlessly busy with the “Memoir,” noting down the same trifles over and over again.
“I know,” replied Ursula, meekly; “but I thought you would like to have this, so I brought it you out of the hall.”
It was a letter from Gerard, away in Acheen, the first response to the more explicit account of their common bereavement, coming back to them across the wide void of five months’ illness and solitude.
The Dowager tore open the envelope. Ursula waited, uncertain how to give least offence.
“There is a message for you,” said the Dowager when she had finished reading; “but I shall not give it you. It is an absurd message. It is an absurd letter in many ways. Poor Gerard, his sorrows have turned his brain. Like mine. Like mine. Like mine.”
She gathered together her papers, aimlessly, scattering them as she took them up.
“Stay with me, Ursula,” she said, querulously. “I have nobody to help me with these important documents. There must be a letter somewhere dated August the 5th, 1854. Or is it April—April, ’45? It is a letter from a friend of your father-in-law; I forget his name. I had it a moment ago. Or was it yesterday I had it? I was reading it to cook. She remembers things. She has been with me a long time. She remembers my dear husband quite well.”