To Mr. Hayle, whom she knew to be fully in her mother’s confidence, she allowed herself to express something of her returning hopefulness.
“Do you not think mamma wonderfully better?” she said to him one day when he had called to see his old friends. “Don’t you think she looks ever so much stronger than when we first came here?”
“She was certainly not looking well then,” said Mr. Hayle evasively.
“Of course not,” said Cicely, “I said so. What I am saying is that she is looking so much better now; don’t you think so?”
Mr. Hayle hesitated. There came before him a vision of Cicely’s mother as he had seen her, little more than a year ago, at Greystone—the contrast between that picture and the gentle faded invalid lying on the sofa in the little Leobury drawing-room was sharp. “I don’t know,” he said at last, for he was not good at dissembling his real feelings.
Cicely’s face fell. She was half inclined to be angry with him. “You need not grudge me a little gleam of hope,” she said.
Mr. Hayle looked distressed.
“I cannot say what I do not think,” he replied. “And even if I could, I don’t think I would do so. It would be very hard upon you to begin to feel confident and hopeful again, and then—”
Cicely understood him. A few days after this conversation, Dr.— came down from town to see Mrs. Methvyn. He thought her on the whole better than when he had last seen her, and left Cicely somewhat comforted, though warning her that the best to be hoped for was not much. So the winter drew on—slowly this year. Christmas, the second Christmas since they left the Abbey, came and went, and still the mother and daughter spoke cheerfully of the future, made plans for Amiel’s return, and smiled in each other’s faces with smiles of resolute cheerfulness—the smiles that are oftentimes more pathetic than tears.
And when the blow fell, it came, as in such cases it often does, from an unexpected direction. The winter was over and gone, the time for the singing of birds was at hand; it was early March, and Cicely was beginning to breathe more freely. “It is a great thing to have got mamma so nicely through the winter,” she said one morning to Parker. And the old servant agreed with her, and had not the heart to add that had the winter been coming instead of going, she would have trembled for her mistress. For to her eyes Mrs. Methvyn’s slow but steady decay of strength was only too plainly perceptible. “It is nearly two months since she had an attack,” Cicely went on, “she cannot but be gaining strength. If only the fine weather will come quickly this year, and we can get her out a little, Parker, I shall feel quite happy about her.”