He went slowly to the study, leaving John Crewys alone.
CHAPTER VI
"Is that you, Cousin John?" said Lady Mary. "Is Sir Timothy gone? I have not been away more than a few minutes, have I?"
She spoke quite brightly. Her cheeks were flushed, and her blue eyes were sparkling with excitement.
John looked at her, and found himself wishing that her soft, brown hair were not strained so tightly from her forehead, nor brushed so closely to her head; the fashion would have been trying to a younger face, and fatal to features less regularly delicate and correct. He also wished she were not dressed like a Quaker's wife. The stiff, grey poplin fitted like a glove the pretty curves of Lady Mary's slender figure, but it lacked distinction, and appropriateness, to John's fastidious eye. Then he reproached himself vehemently for allowing his thoughts to dwell on such trifles at such a moment.
"Will you forgive me for going away the very day you come?" said Lady
Mary.
How quickly, how surprisingly, she recovered her spirits! She had looked so weary and sad as she came down the stairs an hour ago. Now she was almost gay. A feverish and unnatural gaiety, no doubt; but those flushed cheeks, and glittering blue eyes—how they restored the youthful loveliness of the face he had once thought the most beautiful he ever saw!
"I am going to see the last of my boy. You'll understand, won't you? You were an only son too. And your mother would have gone to the ends of the earth to look upon your face once more, wouldn't she? Mothers are made like that."
"Some mothers," said John; and he turned away his head.
"Not yours? I'm sorry," said Lady Mary, simply.