"It is January, Richard, and the sun is sinking."
"In your world perhaps, dear, not in mine."
"We must go back to mother." She laid a hand on his.
"We will go back to mother!" he said, joyously, with a tender emphasis on the word, without moving however. "Mary!—next to you I love your mother!"
Mary's sweet face darkened a little; she buried it in her hands. Meynell drew them tenderly away.
"All that affection can do to soften the differences between us, shall be done," he said, with his whole heart. "I believe too that the sense of them will grow less and less."
Mary made no reply, except by the slight pressure of her fingers on his. She sat in an absorbed sadness, thinking of her mother's life, and the conflict which had always haunted and scorched it, between love and religion; first in the case of her husband, and then in that of her daughter. "But oh! how could I—how could I help it?" was the cry of Mary's own conscience and personality.
She turned with painful eagerness to Meynell. "How did you think her?—how does she strike you?"
"Physically?" He chose his words. "She is so beautiful! But—sometimes—I think she looks frail."
The tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She quickly threw herself upon his misgiving, and tried to argue it away, both in herself and him. She dwelt upon her mother's improvement in sleep and appetite, her cheerfulness, her increased power of walking; she was insistent, almost resentful, her white brow furrowed with pain, even while her hand lay warm in Meynell's. He must needs comfort her; must needs disavow his own impression. After all, what value had such an impression beside the judgment of her daily and hourly watchfulness?—the favourable opinion too, so she insisted, of their local doctor.