She was very much touched. Edward flushed darkly, conscious of how he had been occupied.
'There!' cried she; 'now you're as flushed as you were pale. It's the fever. I'll mix you something that will soon put you all right.'
'I only wish you could,' he sighed.
'And what I wanted,' said she, catching at her previous thought in the same blind way as she caught at her skirts on muddy days—'what I wanted, dear, was—it's so heavy, the cake—'
'You want me to lift it, mother?'
'Yes, my dear. How well you know! And mind not to spoil the icing; it's so hard not to, it being so white and brittle.'
'No, I won't spoil the white,' he said earnestly, 'however hard it is.'
She did not notice that the earnestness was unnatural; intense earnestness in household matters was her normal state.
Chapter 16
The stately May morning, caparisoned in diamonds, full of the solemnity that perfect beauty wears, had come out of the purple mist and shamed the hovel where Hazel dressed for her bridal. The cottage had sunk almost out of recognition in the foam of spring. Ancient lilacs stood about it and nodded purple-coroneted heads across its one chimney. Their scent bore down all other scents like a strong personality and there was no choice but to think the thoughts of the lilac. Two laburnums, forked and huge of trunk, fingered the roof with their lower branches and dripped gold on it. The upper branches sprang far into the blue.