“It is pleasant to see that your cousin enjoys Oxford so much,” said Sorell, as they neared the museum, and saw Pryce and Connie disappearing through the gate of the park.
“Yes. She seems to like it,” said Alice coldly.
Sorell began to talk of his first acquaintance with the Risboroughs, and of Connie’s mother. There was no hint in what he said of his own passionate affection for his dead friends. He was not a profaner of shrines. But what he said brought out the vastness of Connie’s loss in the death of her mother; and he repeated something of what he had heard from others of her utter physical and mental collapse after the double tragedy of the year before.
“Of course you’ll know more about it than I do. But one of the English doctors in Rome, who is a friend of mine, told me that they thought at one time they couldn’t pull her through. She seemed to have nothing else to live for.”
“Oh, I don’t think it was as bad as that,” said Alice drily. “Anyway, she’s quite well and strong now.”
“She’s found a home again. That’s a great comfort to all her mother’s old friends.”
Sorell smiled upon his companion; the sensitive kindness in his own nature appealing to the natural pity in hers.
But Alice made no reply; and he dropped the subject.
They walked across the park, under a wide summer sky, towards the winding river, and the low blue hills beyond it. At the Cherwell boat-house they found the two boats, with four or five men, and Nora, as usual, taking charge of everything, at least till Herbert Pryce should appear.
Connie was just stepping into the foremost boat, assisted by Herbert Pryce, who was in his shirt-sleeves, while Lord Meyrick and another Marmion man were already in the boat.