A few minutes more, and the brougham had carried him away. Lady Lucy, looking after it from the window of her sitting-room, knew that for her at last what she had been accustomed to describe every Sunday as "the sorrows of this transitory life" had begun. Till now they had been as veiled shapes in a misty distance. She had accepted them with religious submission, as applying to others. Her mind, resentful and astonished, must now admit them--pale messengers of powers unseen and pitiless!--to its own daily experience; must look unprotected, unscreened, into their stern faces.
"John!--John!" cried the inner voice of agonized regret. And then: "My boy!--my boy!"
"What did he say?" asked Alicia's voice, beside her.
The sound--the arm thrown round her--were not very welcome to Lady Lucy. Her nature, imperious and jealously independent, under all her sweetness of manner, set itself against pity, especially from her juniors. She composed herself at once.
"He does not give a good account," she said, withdrawing herself gently but decidedly. "It may take a long time before Oliver is quite himself again."
Alicia persisted in a few questions, extracting all the information she could. Then Lady Lucy sat down at her writing-table and began to arrange some letters. Alicia's presence annoyed her. The truth was that she was not as fond of Alicia as she had once been. These misfortunes, huddling one on another, instead of drawing them together, had in various and subtle ways produced a secret estrangement. To neither the older nor the younger woman could the familiar metaphor have been applied which compares the effects of sorrow or sympathy on fine character to the bruising of fragrant herbs. Ferrier's death, sorely and bitterly lamented though it was, had not made Lady Lucy more lovable. Oliver's misfortune had not--toward Lady Lucy, at any rate--liberated in Alicia those hidden tendernesses that may sometimes transmute and glorify natures apparently careless or stubborn, brought eye to eye with pain. Lady Lucy also resented her too long exclusion from Alicia's confidence. Like all the rest of the world, she believed there was an understanding between Oliver and Alicia. Of course, there were reasons for not making anything of the sort public at present. But a mother, she thought, ought to have been told.
"Does Mr. Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?" asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle--his young vigor and distinction--the carriage of his handsome head--was she never to see that sight again--never? Her heart fluttered and sank; the prison of life contracted round her.
She answered, rather shortly.
"He made no plan of the kind. Travelling, in fact, is absolutely forbidden for the present."