"He hardly sleeps, Laura. As I lie awake, I hear him moving about at all hours. I said to Father Leadham the other day—'his heart is broken. When you take him, he will be able to do what you tell him, perhaps. But—for this world—it will be like a dead man.' And Father Leadham did not deny it. He knows it is true."
And thus, so long as her poor strength lasted, Augustina lay and whispered—reporting all the piteous history of those winter months—things that Laura had never heard and never dreamed—a tale of grief so profound and touching that, by the time it ended, every landmark was uprooted in the girl's soul, and she was drifting on a vast tide of pity and passion, whither she knew not.
CHAPTER IV
The next day there was no outing for Augustina. The south-west wind was again let loose upon the valley and the moss, with violent rain from the sea. In the grass the daffodils lay all faded and brown. But the bluebells were marching fast over the copses—as though they sprang in the traces of the rain.
Laura sat working beside Augustina, or reading to her, from morning till dark. Mr. Helbeck had gone into Whinthorpe as usual before breakfast, and was not expected home till the evening. Mrs. Fountain was perhaps more restless and oppressed than she had been the day before. But she would hardly admit it. She lay with the relic beside her, and took the most hopeful view possible of all her symptoms.
Miss Fountain herself that day was in singular beauty. The dark circles round her eyes did but increase their brilliance; the hot fire in Augustina's rooms made her cheeks glow; and the bright blue cotton of her dress had been specially chosen by Molly Friedland to set off the gold of her hair.
She was gay too, to Augustina's astonishment. She told stories of Daffady and the farm; she gossiped with Sister Rosa; she alternately teased and coaxed Fricka. Sister Rosa had been a little cool to her at first after the affair of the relic. But Miss Fountain was so charming this afternoon, so sweet to her stepmother, so amiable to other people, that the little nurse could not resist her.
And at regular intervals she would walk to the window, and report to
Augustina the steady rising of the river.
"It has flooded all that flat bank opposite the first seat—and of that cattle-rail, that bar—what do you call it?—just at the bend—you can only see the very top line. And such a current under the otter cliff! It's splendid, Augustina!—it's magnificent!"
And she would turn her flushed face to her stepmother in a kind of triumph.