Mrs. Weymore, trembling very much, either with cold or that unaccountable nervousness of hers, hardly looked round at the vast wilderness of a room.
"You were with the late Sir Noel then, when he died?"
"Yes, until my lady came. Ah! it was a dreadful thing. He had taken her to a ball, and riding home his horse threw him. We sent for the doctor and my lady at once; and when she came, all white and scared-like, he sent us out of the room. He was as calm and sensible as you or me, but he seemed to have something on his mind. My lady was shut up with him for about three hours, and then we went in—Dr. Gale and me. I shall never forget that sad sight. Poor Sir Noel was dead, and she was kneeling beside him in her ball-dress, like somebody turned to stone. I spoke to her, and she looked up at me, and then fell back in my arms in a fainting fit. Are you cold, Mrs. Weymore, that you shake so?"
"No—yes—it is this desolate room, I think," the governess answered, hardly able to speak.
"It is desolate. Come, I'll show you the billiard-room, and then we'll go up stairs to the room Sir Noel died in. Everything remains just as it was—no one has ever slept there since. If you only knew, Mrs. Weymore, what a sad time it was; but you do know, poor dear, you have lost a husband yourself."
The governess flung up her hands before her face with a suppressed sob, so full of anguish that the housekeeper stared at her aghast. Almost as quickly she recovered herself again.
"Don't mind me," she said, in a choking voice, "I can't help it. You don't know what I suffered—what I still suffer. Oh, pray, don't mind me."
"Certainly not, my dear," said Mrs. Hilliard, thinking inwardly the governess was a very odd person indeed.
They looked at the billiard-room, where the tables stood, dusty and disused, and the balls lay idly by.
"I don't know when it will be used again," said Mrs. Hilliard, "perhaps not until Sir Rupert grows up. There was a time," lowering her voice, "when I thought he would never live to be as old and strong as he is now. He was the punyist baby, Mrs. Weymore, you ever looked at—nobody thought he would live. And that would have been a pity, you know, for the Thetford estate would have gone to a distant branch of the family. As it would, too, if Sir Rupert had been a girl."