“Nearly forty years—it’s a long way to go back,” she said. “We’ve grown old folks; but it’s better to take our time and talk it all over quietly, as you say. Yes, yes, quietly; that is by far the best way.”
Mrs. Lenny nodded till her bonnet seemed to fill all the atmosphere with pink mists of reflection, and laughed, filling the air with reverberations of sound, just as her bonnet did with flickering of coloured light; but she did not throw her arms round him in sisterly salutation; this was something saved at least.
Then he led her in ceremoniously to the great drawing-room, which was carefully shaded and cool and luxurious after the blaze outside. It was sweet with great bowls of late roses, full of flowers of every kind—a stately room such as Mrs. Lenny was not accustomed to see. She stopped short with a cry of admiration.
“What a lovely place! What a beautiful—beautiful house!” Then she put her handkerchief to her eyes. “To think, poor dear, who might have been the mistress of it all!” she said.
Sir William cast an alarmed glance behind him, but his wife was too far off to hear.
“You must recollect,” he said, “that then I had no house at all—no place to make—any one the mistress of. I never expected then to be master here.”
Mrs. Lenny sat down and wiped her eyes.
“It is a beautiful house,” she said. “I’ve been into the park, and seen a great deal; and when I think of all that’s come and gone, when I remember that you were nothing but a poor man, Will Markham, just as poor as all the rest of us—and to see you now, like a prince, with your lovely wife, and her sweet family—oh! I know you’ll forgive me, my dear lady; if your heart is as sweet as your face, you’ll forgive me; but I can’t help thinking that what is given to one is taken from another; and of them that never had a chance of happiness—them that are dead and gone—and the place where they might have been—remembers them no more.”
Lady Markham, who could not shut her heart to any distress, came and sat down by her and took her hand.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “When I have any sorrow it always comes upon me afresh in a new place.”