"Thank you," said Mary Goodwin, after a pause; and one of the elder ladies felt it was an opportune moment to express her preference for cheerful songs.
Di had risen from the piano, and was gathering up her music. Involuntarily John crossed the room, and came and stood beside her. He did not know he had done so till he found himself at her side. Mary Goodwin turned to Miss Fane to say "Good night."
Di slowly put one piece of music on another, absently turning them right side upwards. He saw what was passing through her mind as clearly as if it had been reflected in a glass. He stood by her watching her bend over the piano. He was unable to speak to her or help her. Presently she looked slowly up at him. He had no conception until he tried how difficult it was to meet without flinching the quiet friendship of her eyes.
"John," she said, "my mother wrote that song. Do you remember what a happy, innocent kind of look the miniature had? She was seventeen then, and she was only four and twenty when she died. I don't know how to express it, but somehow the miniature seems a very long way off from the song. I am afraid there must have been a good deal of travelling between-whiles, and not over easy country."
John would have answered something, but the Goodwins were saying "Good night;" and shortly afterwards the others dispersed for the night. But John sat up late over the smoking-room fire, turning things over in his mind, and vainly endeavouring to nail shadows to the wall. It seemed to him as if, while straining towards a goal, he had suddenly discovered, by the merest accident, that he was walking in a circle.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Vous me quittez, n'ayant pu voir
Mon âme à travers mon silence."
Victor Hugo.