In the eagerness and real emotion with which she was putting forth her apology, Miss Ransome forgot for the moment to postulate the supposable regret which she had always believed to be non-existent in the mind of the husband at the probability of his wife’s death; yet for a moment that oversight gave the husband an acute revulsion of feeling.
“God grant she may be wrong!” he said with a low fervency which, as his hearer felt, could not have been put on. She saw her error, and hastened to repair it.
“I was going to say you cannot wish it more than I do!”—with a slight low laugh at the exaggeration of her own expression—“but I do wish it with all my heart! I should be a monster of ingratitude if I did not.”
It was very nearly true. Since Camilla’s death could in no wise profit her, and the memory of her solid kindliness was fresh and vivid, Miss Ransome did wish, with as much sincerity as she was capable of, that Camilla should live, and not die, if she thought such a life as hers worth having.
After that there was not much more to be said, and in a few moments he left her. Neither by the 8.50 nor by any other train was she to return to his hearth’s side. As he reached the door she called softly after him; since she was quite safe now she might give herself that slight indulgence—
“Give my love to the birds. I hope that your next pupil will be quicker in learning your lessons about them.”
He answered, “I shall never have another pupil;” and it was to his credit that this was the nearest he ever went to a declaration.
CHAPTER XXXV
A year and a day had passed since Lady Bletchley’s obsequies. (The word is what she would herself have liked to hear applied to them.) All the presidencies, vice-presidencies, memberships of committees and governing bodies which she had so stirringly filled, had been apportioned among half a dozen less active-minded holders; and though the newspapers of the day had pronounced her loss to be an irreparable one, to the naked eye it seemed already repaired. On the other hand, her memory probably lurked unsuspected in the breasts of recipients of her least trumpeted benefactions. The winter had been mild, and the season promised to be a forward one.
“Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,
A quickening life from the earth’s heart had burst;
As it has ever done with change and motion,
From the great Morning of the world when first
God dawned on chaos.”