“Youth may be wise. That’s just what I should do if I had seen Rome and Venice and the Rhine.”
“Some day you will.”
Angela shook her head. “Neville isn’t fond of travel, and besides we shall be poor because his father and mother will never give him anything after this. He was to have had Harrowby, and we should have settled down here as quietly as Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia. Richard, you know, meant to enter public life, and so the place wasn’t so much to him, and he would have got, like Archie, other property instead of Harrowby. Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia used to talk about it before them, but now all is changed. Neville will have nothing, not an acre, not a stick, not a stone to call his own.”
“But he will have you,” replied Isabey, in a low voice and really thinking aloud.
“And I shall have him,” responded Angela, quickly, and looking steadily into Isabey’s eyes. She had uttered no word of reproach, but Isabey after a moment said quietly:
“You must not be offended with me now for anything I say. I’m so weak in body that it affects my will. I often found myself when I was lying on the floor of that wretched hut asking the doctor for things which I knew in advance he could not have supplied to save his life. Be patient with a man who doesn’t know very well how to bear pain of any sort.”
What woman could resist that? Angela said nothing, but her eyes spoke forgiveness.
“He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing expression.”
Then she opened the book and began to read. Her reading was good and her understanding of the lines perfect. Isabey knew them well, and their far-off, half-forgotten music fell softly upon his spirit. He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing expression, her easy and graceful attitude. It was all so sweetly, divinely peaceful, and then before he knew it his eyes closed and he slept.