[CHAPTER XIII.]
CONCLUSION.
On the sands at Boulogne-sur-mer. Time, a sunny afternoon. The persons are Mrs. Kelvin and her son. The lady is half sitting half reclining in the Bath chair in which she has been wheeled down to the sands. Matthew Kelvin is sitting on a camp stool close by his mother, smoking a cigarette, and dividing his attention between the bathers and a lazy skimming of the London papers, which have just come to hand. He is looking infinitely better than when we saw him last, and his mother thinks that if she can only persuade him to stay away from that odious business for another month, he will become as strong and hearty as ever he was. It is her fixed belief that Matthew cannot really be happy out of his office, and it is a belief that he had never cared to disturb.
Mrs. Kelvin's attention, like that of her son, is half distracted from the gay scene before her. The steamer has brought her several letters, which she is reading intermittently, smiling to herself now and then as she reads, and anon lifting her eyes to note the latest arrival on the sands, or to watch for a moment the kaleidoscopic changes in the ever-varying groups of loungers and bathers with which she is surrounded. There is one letter, however, that she has kept till the last. Her face clouds as she opens it. She glances at Matthew, and sees that he is still busy with his newspapers. The letter does not take her long to read, and, with a little sigh, she puts it back into its envelope. The sigh rouses Matthew--he looks up.
"What is it, mother?" he asks. "Have Mrs. Aylmer's preserves turned oat badly? or has Miss Rainbow's ancient tabby given up the ghost at last?" He takes her hand, and squeezes it with a little affectionate gesture.
"Matthew," says the old lady very gravely, "I have had a letter this morning from Olive Deane."
He turns quickly round, and his face seems to harden as he turns.
"And has she really dared to write to you?" he says, sternly. "Does she think that the past can be so soon forgotten?"
"My dear, you are not like you talk in that way," answers Mrs. Kelvin, as she lays her hand caressingly on her son's shoulder. "I never rightly understood the reason of that terrible quarrel between you and Olive. You were too ill for me to question you much at the time, and since you have been better the mere mention of Olive's name has seemed so distasteful to you, that I have spoken of her as little as possible. But to say that I should not like to know how it happened that you fell out so strangely, would be to say that I am not a woman."
Under his breath Mr. Kelvin calls himself by a very strong name for having spoken so hastily. He has carefully concealed from his mother the fact of Olive Deane having been implicated in any way with regard to his long illness. He has dreaded the effect such a revelation might have upon her. He has allowed her to surmise and wonder as to the origin of their sudden estrangement, but he has never really enlightened her.