"Yes, if you think you feel quite—quite rested enough, dear, after your journey," he answers reluctantly.
So they all come in haste and trembling, Lady Saunderson giving up two important appointments with Worth, traveling up from London with her elder brother, who seems paralyzed by the news that he had heard so unexpectedly.
Armstrong interviews them first, and in a few stern impressive words gives them the outline of their sister's story, and warns them against exciting her with ill-timed emotion in her critical state.
So with smiling faces and cheerful words they welcome her back as if she has been on a pleasant trip. There are no passionate tears, no hysterical kisses, no entreaties for forgiveness, no remorseful appeals. The meeting which Armstrong has been dreading opens and closes in sunshine, and Addie, propped up with cushions, greets them with glistening unresentful glance and gentle loving words.
"How well they look! Don't they, Tom?" she cries, turning a beaming face to her husband, against whose shoulder she is resting. "And, take them all in all, what a good-looking family they are to be sure! Why, Lottie, what an immense girl you have grown! And you've got all the doubtful bloom of my teens, roses, flesh, and freckles—all. I don't suppose it would become me to call you pretty, would it? Polly, what a swell you are—just like pictures from Le Follet. But your face hasn't changed much. Bob, I won't believe that mustache is genuine until I pull it. Come over here, sir, and face the light at once! What! You are afraid? I thought so," she adds with a gay laugh, as the boy turns away swiftly to hide the burning tears he can not keep from his eyes.
They sit together all the afternoon, chatting merrily, recalling old family jokes, making plans for the future; and, when tea is brought in, Addie insists on pouring it out, her husband's large hand covering hers and guiding the spout to the tea-pot. She makes them all drink her health, declares she has never felt so well and happy in her life, and sends a loving message to poor Aunt Jo, who is laid up with rheumatic fever, which Lottie promises to deliver without fail. Then she makes engagements to spend a week with Bob at Aldershot during the maneuvers, to visit Hal at the Naval College, to stop a month at the Park with Pauline, and to take Lottie for a trip abroad during the holidays. Toward evening she seems a little tired; so, at a signal from Armstrong, the family withdraw by degrees, and she sinks into a light doze, from which she awakes with an uneasy start.
"Tom, Tom, where are you?"
"Here, here, where I always am—by your—side, sweetheart."
"They have all gone?"
"Yes, for the present."