And Barnaby's mother looked up at her approach. Something of the old defiant jauntiness came back to her for a minute. She tried to laugh.
"Come here and kiss me," she called. There was a fierce tenderness in her cry—"you darling—!"
CHAPTER III
Susan had flung from her with both hands the imprudent longing to cry out her story.
Somehow she felt that if she spoke now she would be a traitor. It was too late to look back; for good or ill she had changed places with the other woman who would not come. To fail now would not be to clear her honour, it would be to desert her post.
When Lady Henrietta, having triumphed, had given way at last, and had clung to Susan, the girl, gathered in that fierce clasp, had known that Barnaby's mother took passionate comfort in her only because the stranger was something that had belonged to him. To deny her that comfort would be to rob one who had nothing left. Could she, by a wistful life of devotion, justify herself, not in the sight of man, not to hard judges—but perhaps to this Barnaby who was dead, and who would surely understand? Keeping silent, she promised him that she would.
Day after day passed over her head, building an unsteady wall between her and that pitiless outside world in which she had been like a driven leaf, without hope or foothold. She became accustomed to the lazy peace of the house, to the watchful offices of the old servants, who seemed, like Lady Henrietta herself, curiously proud of her.
Slowly she grew stronger; her thin cheek rounded, still pale, but touched with a faint promise of colour.
One afternoon she was taking her solitary walk in the park, and had wandered farther than she had been. The dogs had left her, scurrying after rabbits, and she leaned on a stile that offered a resting-place, a little tired and wistful, gazing at the sinking fire in the west.