He turned into his mother's house. Not by the open window; not by stepping over the slight fence; but he knocked at the front-door, and was admitted as an ordinary visitor. Whether it was from having lived apart for so many years of their lives, or that a certain cordiality was wanting in the disposition of each, certain it was that Dr. Rane and his mother observed more ceremony with each other than usually obtains between mother and son.
Mrs. Cumberland sat at the open dining-room window just as he had seen her from his staircase landing; a newspaper lay behind her on a small table, as if just put down. Ellen Adair, as might be heard, was at the piano in the drawing-room, playing, perhaps from unconscious association, and low and softly as it was her delight to play, the "Dead March in Saul." The dirge grated on the ears of Dr. Rane.
"What a melancholy performance!" he involuntarily exclaimed; and Mrs. Cumberland looked up, there was so much irritation in his tone.
He shook hands with his mother, but did not kiss her, which he was not accustomed to do, and stood back against the broad window, his face turned to it.
"You are a stranger, Oliver," she said. "What has kept you away?"
"I have been busy. To-day especially. They had an accident at the works--two men were nearly drowned--and I have been with them all the morning."
"I heard of it. Jelly brought me in the news; she seems to hear everything. How fortunate that you were at hand!"
He proceeded, rather volubly for him, to give particulars of the accident and of the process he adopted to recover the men. Mrs. Cumberland looked and listened with silent, warm affection; but that she was a particularly undemonstrative woman, she would have betrayed it in her manner. In her eyes, there was not so fine and handsome and estimable a man in all Dallory as this her only son.
"Oliver, what a dreadful thing this is about Edmund North! I have not seen you since. Why did you not come in and tell me the same night?"
He turned his eyes on her for a moment in surprise, and paused.