Mabel lowered the sash.
“You have been sitting in a room without fire, I suspect. The temperature here is delightful. I am sorry we have exiled you from such comfortable quarters.”
“Don't speak of it! I cannot endure to sit here alone—or anywhere else. I have slept most of the afternoon. How the wind blows! I wish Winston were at home.”
“It is a dark afternoon. He seldom returns from court so early as this. It is not six yet.”
Mabel still essayed pacification of the other's ruffled mood.
“You are better, I see,” Mrs. Aylett said abruptly to her brother. “You were not subject to these spells formerly. People generally outlive constitutional headaches—so I have noticed. It is queer yours should occur so often and wax more violent each time. You should have medical advice before they ripen into a more serious disorder.”
Herbert shaded his eyes from the fire, and lay with out replying, until his wife believed he had relapsed into a doze.
She was convinced of her mistake by his saying, slowly and distinctly,—
“You do not enter into Clara's whole meaning, Mabel. We have been careful, all of us, never to tell you that our father was imbecile by the time he was fifty and died, in his sixtieth year, of the disease your brother named this morning—softening of the brain. I, of all his children, am most like him physically. If it be true that this danger menaces me, you should be informed of it, and know, furthermore, that it is incurable.”
Mabel also paused before answering.