She was sane after that, and tried to behave as if nothing had happened to her, but the change in her was quite visible to the naked eye. Next day she buckled to her steward’s work with a whole-hearted dominance, that ensured success, and Mrs. Fellowes went home to her husband big with happy news.
When five weeks had passed, and she had neither message or sight of Humphrey, Gwen’s magnificent abandonment of joy had a break, and a trembling came into it, and into her eyes a wave of fear, and every time she came in from her work in the village or on the home farm, she betook herself to the baby to steady her nerves.
And then the press began to set flying little gnat-like biting doubts as to Strange’s unaccountable silence, after it was ascertained through a long-delayed scrap of a note to Mrs. Fellowes that he had joined an ivory expedition into an unsettled district. Then to add to her anxieties, the missionary, grateful for his intended capture, ran down to Strange Hall, and being rather an ass, and having been left with only the tail end of a constitution—a solemn and gloomy one—he gave her a most lurid and awful impression of those parts into which Humphrey had penetrated.
She put a brave front on, but she had a shocking time of it, and her usual song to her baby in exactly Humphrey’s tones was,
“Dann willst du weine, du liebe kleine!”
which the baby looked upon as a huge joke.
Week after week passed and not a word, and then whisperings of relief expeditions began to stir the papers, and Mrs. Fellowes was hurrying up wildly with her work to be able to get to Gwen.
At last she came over from the station in a fly, a day or two before she was expected, and found Gwen in Strange’s den, which showed tokens of her all over the place, playing with her child, now a big fellow who beat the record in the matter of crawling.
When the nurse took him at last, Gwen said to Mrs. Fellowes rather grimly,