Then he looked at her fingers and their uncertain movements among the silks; at the face bent over the workbasket.
'I want if I can to keep some bad news from my cousin,' he said abruptly.
Lucy started and looked up. He had her face full now, and the lovely entreating eyes.
'My sister is very ill. There has been another crisis. I might be summoned at any time.'
'Oh!'—she said, faltering. Unconsciously she moved a step nearer to him.
In a moment she was all enquiry, and deep, shy sympathy—the old docile
Lucy. 'Have you had a letter?' she asked.
'Yes, this morning. I saw her the other day when I passed through Rome. She knew me, but she is a wreck. The whole constitution is affected. Sometimes there are intervals, but they get rarer. And each acute attack weakens her seriously.'
'It is terrible—terrible!'
As she stood there before him in her white dress under the twilight, he had a vision of her lying with shut eyes in his chair at Marinata; he remembered the first wild impulse that had bade him gather her, unconscious and helpless, in his arms.
He moved away from her. For something to do, or say, he stooped down to look into her open workbasket.
'Isn't that one of the Nemi terra-cottas!'