"But you were none the worse? you got over it all right?"
"I was really wonderful," replies she; "we sick people"—with a little air of playfulness—"do give you well ones these surprises sometimes; but I must not take the credit to myself: it is really every bit due to Dr. Crump, my new doctor, who is a perfect marvel of intuition. I always tell him that he never need ask; he divines how one is; he says he is a mere bundle of nerves himself; that is, I suppose, why one can talk to him upon subjects that are sealed books with one's nearest and dearest."
Her voice has a suspicious tremble in it which frightens Jim anew.
He looks again apprehensively for help towards the two tiers of curving column and rounding arch, which rise in cool grace above each other, and sees, with relief, the figure of Cecilia leaning over the balustrade that runs along the upper tier, and looking down upon him. At the same moment Mr. Wilson enters, and shortly afterwards they all go to luncheon. It is not a very pleasant repast, although the cool dining-room, with its beautiful old pierced stucco ceiling and its hanging brass lamps, contributes its part handsomely towards what should be their enjoyment. There is no overt family quarrel, but just enough of covert recrimination and sub-acid sparring to make an outsider feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and to prove how inharmonious a whole the soured little family now forms.
"We quarrel more than we used to do, do not we?" says Cecilia, when Jim, a little later, takes leave, and she walks, under her red sunshade, up the ilexed drive with him to the pillared gate; "and to-day we were better than usual, because you were by. Oh, I wish you were always by!"
He cannot echo the wish. He had thought that he had already held his dead Amelia at her true value; but never, until to-day, has he realized through what a long purgatory of obscure heroisms she had passed to her reward.
"I do hope you will not drop us altogether. Of course, now that the link that bound us to you is broken"—her voice quivers, but he feels neither the fear nor the rage that a like phenomenon in Sybilla has produced in him—"there is nothing to hold you any longer; but I do trust you will not quite throw us over."
"My dear old girl, why should I? I hope that you and I shall always be the best of friends, and that before long I shall see you settled in a home of your own."
"You mean that I shall marry? Well, to be sure"—with a recurrence to that business-like tone which had always amused him formerly in her discussion of her affairs of the heart—"I ought to have a better chance now than ever, as I shall have a larger fortune; but"—with a lapse into depression—"this is not a good place for men—I mean Englishmen. There are troops of delightful-looking Frenchmen, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and Zouaves; but, then, we do not know any of them—not one. Well, perhaps"—philosophically—"it is for the best; one always hears that Frenchmen make very bad husbands."