“They will be pleased with this fog at sea,” he said. “I can fancy that I hear the bells ringing. What have you been doing all day, little woman?”
She looked at him with questioning intentness. Rarely can a man hide care from the world—very rarely, indeed, from the eyes of the woman who loves him.
“Mrs. Winnie has been teaching me to make button-holes, John. Will and I went out after dinner, and were nearly lost in the fog. You look tired.”
He had dropped her hands, but he caught them again with the impulsive frankness of a man who knows himself to be but a poor dissembler.
“I am tired, Barbe—heart-tired; I cannot pretend that I am not.”
“John!”
Her voice had a touch of appeal in it.
“This morning I went out innocently enough, child; but I have returned with more than I foreshadowed.”
“Where have you been, John?”
“To Thorn.”