"Into our nest," returned Doreen, with a smile. "You have chosen too cheerful a simile. Larks soar perpetually, and they sing as they soar."
"I think I am more like a blind mole at the present moment," replied Althea, pushing up her shade a little, that she might see her sister's face. "Dorrie, I am ashamed of myself. I deserve any amount of scolding. I try to count up my blessings, to think of my girls' happy faces, but I am fast in my Slough of Despond, and not all your efforts will pull me out."
"Very well, then, we must leave you there," returned Doreen, composedly; but she gave Althea's hand a loving little squeeze as she said this. Her heart was full of tenderness and sympathy, but she was too sensible to waste words fruitlessly.
These sick moods were purely physical, and would yield, she knew well, to time and rest. They were trials to be borne—part of Althea's life-discipline—the cloud that checkered their home cheerfulness; for these melancholy moods seemed to pervade the whole house.
Althea felt much as usual that morning, though she had not quite recovered her looks. Her face seemed longer and more sallow, and there were tired lines round her eyes. When a woman has passed her youth, mental suffering leaves an indelible mark; and Althea looked old and worn that day, and more like Queen Elizabeth's Wraith than ever.
"I am very idle," she was saying to herself, "but I feel that not one of the books that ever were written would interest me to-day. I have no spirit or energy for travels, history is too full of war and bloodshed, and biography would weary me; a novel—well, no I think not; I am not in the mood for other people's love-stories. I wish some one would write a novel about elderly people," she went on—"middle-aged, prosaic people, who have outlived their romance. How soothing such a book would be! I could almost write it myself. There should be plenty of incident, and very little moralising; and it would be like one of those grey winter days, when the sunlight is veiled in soft vapour, and every window one passes is red with the firelight of home."
The fancy pleased her, and she smiled at her own conceit; but it faded in a moment when the door-bell rang.
"A visitor at this time in the morning!" she thought, and a little frown of annoyance gathered on her brow; but it vanished when Mitchell threw open the door and announced Lord Ralston.
"Why, Moritz!" she exclaimed, and her voice was full of surprise and pleasure, "this is indeed a welcome sight. How long is it since you last honoured our poor abode? Draw that chair up to the fire and give some account of yourself. Even Gwen seems to have forgotten our existence since baby Murdoch made his appearance!"
"Ah, you may well say so," returned Moritz, with a dismal shake of his head. "Gwen is incorrigible. I give you my word, Althea, that the beatitude of that young woman is so excessive and so fatuous that it resembles idiocy. She fairly drivels with sentiment over that infant, and he is as ugly and snub-nosed a little chap as Gwen was herself. He has even got her freckles; and she calls them beauty-spots;" and Lord Ralston's voice expressed unmitigated disgust.