"Van," she whispered, "there are Mr. and Mrs. Dround!"
She hesitated a moment, and then, as the two came nearer, she stepped forward to meet them, and Jane looked up at us. The two women glanced at each other, then spoke. Mrs. Dround said something to her husband, and he gave me a slow look of returning recognition, as if my face recalled vague memories.
"Mr. Harrington?" he said questioningly, taking my hand in a hesitating way, as though he were not quite sure about me yet. "Oh, yes! I am glad to see you again. How is Mr. Carmichael? Well, I hope, and prospering?"
The man's mind was a blank!
"Yes, Mrs. Dround and I have been abroad this winter," he continued, "but we have come back to live here. America is the proper place for Americans, I have always believed. I have no patience with those people who expatriate themselves. Yes, Mrs. Dround wanted me to take a place in Kent, but I would not listen to it. I know where my duty lies,"—he straightened himself with slow pompousness,—"How are the children? All well, I hope?"
Jane was talking with Sarah, and the four of us after a while entered the house, which was just being finished by the contractor. In the hall Mr. Dround turned to Sarah and made some remark about the house, and the agent, who happened to be there, led them upstairs. Jane and I followed.
"So you have come home to live?" I asked.
"Yes!" She sank down on a workman's bench, with a sigh of weariness. As I looked at her more closely, it seemed to me that at last age had touched her. There were white strands in her black hair, and there were deep circles beneath the dark eyes—eyes that were dull from looking without seeing anything in particular.
"It was best for Henry," she added quietly. "He is restless over there. You see, he forgets everything so quickly now. It has been so for nearly a year."
There was the story of her days—the watcher and keeper of this childish man, whose mind was fading away before its time. With a sense of the cruelty in it, I turned away from her hastily and looked out of the window.