“You have nothing left but your poor old wife,” she said, stifling a sob.
“I don’t count you,” he said, with something of his old manner; “you are part of myself. We have gone through everything together, Elma.”
Lady Haigh murmured something about going home to Scotland and ending their days together, but she left the sentence unfinished. How she managed to get out of the room without absolutely breaking down she did not know, but Georgia found her a short time later dissolved in tears.
“He never spoke to me like that before,” she sobbed. “We have never been a sentimental couple—not even when we were first married. He couldn’t bear that sort of thing; and though I might have liked a little—just a little—more expression, don’t you know? I was not going to worry him. We were good comrades always, and I think I can say that I never stood in his way when he was ordered to do anything. He would come to me in the morning and say, ‘Elma, I am ordered to such and such a place,’ a thousand miles off, perhaps—and I would say, ‘Very well, dear; what time must I be ready? or will it do if we start to-morrow?’ He never said anything, but I knew he liked it, and he was as proud as I was that I could shift quarters as quickly as any soldier of them all. And we have always been together, as he says, and now he must give up work at last!”
“But you have your place in Scotland, Lady Haigh, and Sir Dugald will find plenty to do there, and be very happy. It would not surprise me if he recovered entirely when he had no official work to worry him.”
“But that very official work has been the mainspring of his life. He will be lost without it. And how will things go on without him? To escape so many dangers and recover from that poisoning just for this! No, Georgie, don’t try to show me the bright side of it yet. Let me have my cry out now, and, God helping me, I’ll say no more about it, and he shan’t know. I won’t fail him after all just when he needs me most.”
“Dick,” said Georgia that evening when they met before dinner, “who is the bravest woman you know?”
“You,” he replied, promptly.
“Don’t be absurd; I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I should be satisfied if I were half as brave as Lady Haigh. I think that she and Sir Dugald are just worthy of one another.”
“I suppose there’s a concealed snub somewhere in that remark intended for me, but I can’t quite locate it yet. I have a good mind to ask Stratford to find it out for me—I always want to apply to him for an explanation when your reproofs are couched in too learned language—but he isn’t down yet.”