‘No, he is not here.’
She sat down with a sigh of relief, and put back altogether the heavy gauze veil which had enveloped her head.
‘Is he coming back? Are you—— Tell them to admit no one, no one! while I am here.’
‘I do not think you need fear; he is not coming back.’
She leaned back in her chair with relief. It was the same chair in which the other had been sitting when John had left the room in the afternoon. This recollection gave him a curious sensation, as if two images, which were so antagonistic had met and blended in spite of themselves.
‘I don’t know what I said to you this afternoon; I was so taken by surprise: and yet I was not surprised. I—expected it: only not that it should have happened to you. It is better,’ she continued, after a pause, ‘that it should have happened to you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said John; ‘I may be better able to bear it—but why did I have no warning that such a thing could be.’
‘Oh, why?’ said she, with a quick breath of impatience—rather as demanding why he should ask than as allowing the possibility of giving an explanation. She loosened her long black cloak and put it back from her shoulders, and thus the shadows seemed to open a little, and the light to concentrate in her pale, clear face. It is but rarely, perhaps, that children observe the beauty of their mothers, and never, save when it is indicated to them by the general voice, or by special admiration. John had never thought of Mrs. Sandford in this light; but now it suddenly struck him for the first time that she had been, that she was, a woman remarkable in appearance, as in character, with features which she had not transmitted to her children, no common-place, comely type, but features which seemed meant for lofty emotions, for the tragic and impassioned. She had not been in circumstances, so far as he had seen her, to develop these, and her lofty looks had fallen into rigidity, and the austereness of rule and routine. Sometimes they had melted when she looked at Susie, but no higher aspect than that of a momentary softening had ever animated her countenance in his ken. Now it was different. Her fine nostrils moved, dilating and trembling, with a sensitiveness which was a revelation to her son; her eyes shone; her mouth, which was so much more delicate than he had been aware, closed with an impassioned force, in which, however, there was the same suspicion of a quiver. Her face was full of sensation, of feeling, of passion. She was not the same woman as that austere and authoritative one whom he had all this time known. When he returned from giving the order which she asked, that nobody should be admitted, he found her leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, which seemed to make the rest of her face, which was all quivering with emotion, even more expressive than before.
‘I thought that I had not told you enough—that you deserved explanations, which, painful, most painful as they are, ought to be given to you now. I suppose I told you very little to-day?’