“I don’t see the stone,” he said.
“What? What is that?”
He turned, and said again, “I don’t see it!”
Margaret went by him swiftly.
“It was here! here!” and, utterly bewildered, she stood, looking up at her husband, or down at the grave, and then around her. “Archie! It is gone! This is—is horrible.”
Lyndsay paused a moment. He was both troubled and perplexed; but the intellectual puzzle was uppermost, and, as usual with him, was merely fed with motives for action and decisions by the shock of horror with which the thing affected him. As for his wife, she looked down again at the trampled ground and broken flower-stems, and then saying, “What is it? Where is it?” began to go to and fro, irregularly, among the graves, and along the tumbling stone wall of the inclosure.
At last she ran, like a scared thing, back to her husband, threw her arms about him, and burst into violent sobbing.
“Oh, my boy! my boy!” she cried. Her face twitched, and she broke out into unnatural laughter. Lyndsay caught her as she reeled to and fro.
“Take care, Margaret! Margaret! Be quiet. No more of this! I command you to control yourself!”
As he spoke he lifted her slight figure, and carried her to the gate.