"No—but——"
She looked vaguely round the walls, saw a pair of old Delft vases still empty, and said eagerly, pointing, "I will bring some for those. There is a tree—a cherry tree," the nurse remembered afterwards that she had spoken with a remarkable slowness and clearness, "just above the otter cliff. You don't know where that is. But Mr. Helbeck knows."
The nurse glanced at her, and wondered. Miss Fountain, no doubt, had been dazed a little by the sudden shock. She had learnt, however, not to interfere with the first caprices of grief, and she did not try to dissuade the girl from going.
When the flowers were all laid, Laura went round to the further side of the bed and dropped on her knees. She gazed steadily at Augustina for a little; then she turned to the faldstool beside the bed and the shelf above it, with Augustina's prayer-books, and on either side of the St. Joseph, on the wall, the portraits of Helbeck and his mother. The two nurses moved away to the window that she might be left a little to herself. They had seen enough, naturally, to make them divine a new situation, and feel towards her with a new interest and compassion.
When she rejoined them, they were alternately telling their beads and looking at the glory of the sunrise as it came marching from the distant fells over the park. The rain had ceased, but the trees and grass were steeped, and the river came down in a white flood under the pure greenish spaces, and long pearly clouds of the morning sky.
Laura gave it all one look. Then she drew her cloak round her again.
"Dear Miss Fountain," whispered Sister Rosa, entreating, "don't be long.
And when you come in, let me get you dry things, and make you some tea."
The girl made a sign of assent.
"Good-bye," she said under her breath, and she gently kissed first Sister Rosa, and then the other nurse, Sister Mary Raphael, who did not know her so well, and was a little surprised perhaps to feel the touch of the cold small lips.
They watched her close the door, and some dim anxiety made them wait at the window till they saw her emerge from the garden wall into the park. She was walking slowly with bent head. She seemed to stand for a minute or two at the first seat commanding the bend of the river; then the rough road along the Greet turned and descended. They saw her no more.