"Yes, mother."
"That's a good boy."
She did not notice that her son's usual gravity was intensified, or that his very lips were pallid, and his eyes careworn and lustreless.
It was raining. The young fresh leaves, in the colourless day, had lost their verdure, and the massive shapes of the elm trees were obscured in the mist. The sky had so melancholy a tone that it seemed a work of man—a lifeless hue of infinite sorrow, dreary and cheerless.
James arrived at the Clibborns' house.
"Miss Mary is in the drawing-room," he was told by a servant, who smiled on him, the accepted lover, with obtrusive friendliness.
He went in and found her seated at the piano, industriously playing scales. She wore the weather-beaten straw hat without which she never seemed comfortable.
"Oh, I'm glad you've come," she said. "I'm alone in the house, and I was taking the opportunity to have a good practice." She turned round on the music-stool, and ran one hand chromatically up the piano, smiling the while with pleasure at Jamie's visit. "Would you like to go for a walk?" she asked. "I don't mind the rain a bit."
"I would rather stay here, if you don't mind."
James sat down and began playing with a paper-knife. Still he did not know how to express himself. He was torn asunder by rival emotions; he felt absolutely bound to speak, and yet could not bear the thought of the agony he must cause. He was very tender-hearted; he had never in his life consciously given pain to any living creature, and would far rather have inflicted hurt upon himself.