"My precious little grandchild," she cried; and Laurence asked her naïvely:
"If you are glad that we have come home, mamma and me, why do you cry?"
"You must not ask questions, my little lad," said Mr. Ford, coming forward and greeting his hostess, and thinking to himself that she had suddenly grown beautiful in the radiance of the joy-light that beamed upon her face.
He asked the question that Laurel was too timid to syllable upon her lips.
"How is Mr. Le Roy?"
"He has had a relapse—he is quite unwell to-day," Mrs. Le Roy said, tremulously. "He has been very ill since we brought him from the seashore. He makes no effort to recover. He does not seem to care to live."
She looked at Laurel as she spoke.
"It is all your fault, dear!" she said, gently. "Life has never been the same since you were lost to him. Only this morning the physician told me that without some object in life, something more to live for than he has now, my son would never get well."
Laurel's face was very pale. She drew her arm tightly around her son as he stood by her side. "May I—see him?" she asked, in a faint, trembling voice, without lifting her eyes.
"He is in his own room, dear. Go to him as soon as you please," Mrs. Le Roy answered, gladly.