“You have my orders, Ellerton,” returned his master, curtly; and he ascended the staircase with the frown still heavy on his face.
He did not like to feel so ashamed of himself, and this was his mode of showing it.
Fay lay on a couch in her bedroom looking very lovely, in her white tea-gown trimmed with lace, with her brown hair hanging in long plaits, and a little rose-leaf color tinting her cheeks. She was listening with a beating heart for the well-known footsteps; as they sounded at last in the corridor and she heard his voice speaking to Ellerton, she sat up, flushed and trembling, and under the soft shawl something that lay hidden stirred uneasily as she moved.
“You must not excite yourself, my lady,” observed the nurse, anxiously; but she might as well have spoken to the wind, for Fay seemed to have forgotten her presence.
“Oh, Hugh, my darling husband!” she exclaimed, as the door opened; and the tender rose flush deepened in her cheeks as she stretched out her hand to him with her old smile.
Hugh stooped over the couch and kissed her, and then sat down with rather a dissatisfied expression on his face; he thought they had made a fuss to frighten him, and bring him home—she did not look so very ill after all.
“I could not come to meet you, love,” she said, with a little clasp of his hand, and she kissed it in her old way and laid it against her face.
“My dear Fay,” he remonstrated, and bit his lip. “Nurse, you can trust your patient in my care. I will ring for you in a little while.” Then, as the door closed behind her, he said in a vexed tone, “Fay, why will you be so childish? you know that I object to demonstration before the servants, and have told you so, and yet you never seem to remember; do try to be a little more dignified, my dear, and wait until we are alone.” And this to her who had come back to him through “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” bringing his boy with her!
Fay became very white, and drew her hand away. “You do not seem to remember how very ill I have been,” she faltered. And their the baby’s blind wandering touches over her breast soothed her.
Hugh grew a little remorseful.