'Yes; very well.'
'Papa you really are very cruel to that poor girl,' were Ethel's first words outside.
'Am I? I wouldn't be for worlds, Ethel. But somehow she always puts me in a rage. I wish I knew she was not worrying her brother at this moment!'
No, Averil was on the staircase, struggling, choking with the first tears she had shed. All this fortnight of unceasing vigilance and exertion, her eyes had been dry, for want of time to realize, for want of time to weep, and now she was ashamed that hurt feeling rather than grief had opened the fountain. She could not believe that it was not a cruel act of kindness, to carry one so weak as Leonard away from home to the care of a stranger. She apprehended all manner of ill consequences; and then nursing him, and regarding his progress as her own work, had been the sedative to her grief, which would come on her 'like an armed man,' in the dreariness of his absence. Above all, she felt herself ill requited by his manifest eagerness to leave her who had nursed him so devotedly—her, his own sister—for the stiff, plain Miss May whom he hardly knew. The blow from the favourite companion brother, so passionately watched and tended, seemed to knock her down; and Dr. May, with medical harshness, forbidding her the one last hope of persuading him out of the wild fancy, filled up the measure.
Oh, those tears! How they would swell up at each throb of the wounded heart, at each dismal foreboding of the desponding spirit. But she had no time for them! Leonard must not be left alone, with no one to cover him up with his wrappers.
The tears were strangled, the eyes indignantly dried. She ran out at the garden door. The sofa was empty! Had Henry come home and helped him in? She hurried on to the window; Leonard was alone in the drawing-room, resting breathlessly on an ottoman within the window.
'Dear Leonard! Why didn't you wait for me!'
'I thought I'd try what I could do. You see I am much stronger than we thought.' And he smiled cheerfully, as he helped himself by the furniture to another sofa. 'I say, Ave, do just give me the map—the one in Bradshaw will do. I want to find this place.'
'I don't think there is a Bradshaw,' said Averil, reluctantly.
'Oh yes, there is—behind the candlestick, on the study chimney-piece.'
'Very well—' There were more tears to be gulped down—and perhaps they kept her from finding the book.
'Where's the Bradshaw?'
'I didn't see it.'
'I tell you I know it was there. The left-hand candlestick, close to the letter-weight. I'll get it myself.'
He was heaving himself up, when Averil prevented him by hastening to a more real search, which speedily produced the book.
Eagerly Leonard unfolded the map, making her steady it for his shaking hand, and tracing the black toothed lines.
'There's Bridport—ten miles from there. Can you see the name, Ave?'
'No, it is not marked.'
'Never mind. I see where it is; and I can see it is a capital place; just in that little jag, with famous bathing. I wonder if they will stay long enough for me to learn to swim?'
'You are a good way from that as yet,' said poor Averil, her heart sinking lower and lower.
'Oh, I shall be well at once when I get away from here!'
'I hope so.'
'Why, Ave!' he cried, now first struck with her tone, 'don't you know I shall?'
'I don't know,' she said, from the soreness of her heart; 'but I can't tell how to trust you with strangers.'
'Strangers! You ungrateful child!' exclaimed Leonard, indignantly. 'Why, what have they been doing for you all this time?'
'I am sure Miss May, at least, never came near us till to-day.'
'I'm very glad of it! I'm sick of everything and everybody I have seen!'
Everybody! That was the climax! Averil just held her tongue; but she rushed to her own room, and wept bitterly and angrily. Sick of her after all her devotion! Leonard, the being she loved best in the world!
And Leonard, distressed and hurt at the reception of his natural expression of the weariness of seven weeks' sickness and sorrow, felt above all the want of his mother's ever-ready sympathy and soothing, and as if the whole world, here, there, and everywhere, would be an equally dreary waste. His moment of bright anticipation passed into heavy despondency, and turning his head from the light, he dropped asleep with a tear on his cheek.
When he awoke it was at the sound of movements in the room, slow and cautious, out of regard to his slumbers—and voices, likewise low—at least one was low, the other that whisper of the inaudibility of which Averil could not be disabused. He lay looking for a few moments through his eyelashes, before exerting himself to move. Averil, her face still showing signs of recent tears, sat in a low chair, a book in her lap, talking to her brother Henry.
Henry was of less robust frame than Leonard promised to be, and though on a smaller scale, was more symmetrically made, and had more regular features than either his brother or sister, but his eyes were merely quick lively black beads, without anything of the clear depths possessed by the others. His hair too was jet black, whereas theirs was a pale nut brown; and his whiskers, long and curling, so nearly met under his chin, as to betray a strong desire that the hirsute movement should extend to the medical profession. Always point-device in apparel, the dust on his boot did not prevent its perfect make from being apparent; and the entire sit of his black suit would have enabled a cursory glance to decide that it never came out of the same shop as Dr. May's.
'O, Henry!' were the words that he first heard distinctly.
'It will be much better for every one—himself and you included.'
'Yes, if—'
'If—nonsense. I tell you he will be quite well enough. See how well I am now, how fast I got on as soon as I took to tonics.—Ha, Leonard, old fellow! what, awake? What do you say to this plan of old May's?'
'It is very kind of him; and I should be very glad if I am well enough; but next week is very soon,' said Leonard, waking in the depression in which he had gone to sleep.
'Oh, next week! That is as good as next year in a matter like this, as May agreed with me, here, let us have your pulse. You have let him get low, Averil. A basin of good soup will put more heart into you, and you will feel ready for anything.'
'I have got on to-day, said Leonard, briskly raising himself, as though the cheerful voice had been cordial in itself.
'Of course you have, now that you have something to look forward to; and you will be in excellent hands; the very thing I wanted for you, though I could not see how to manage it. I am going to dress. I shall tell them to send in dinner; and if I am not down, I shall be in the nursery. You won't come in to dinner, Leonard?'
'No, said Leonard, with a shudder.
'I shall send you in some gravy soup, that you may thank me for. Ave never would order anything but boiled chickens for you, and forgets that other people ever want to eat. There will be a chance of making a housekeeper of her now.'
How selfish, thought Averil, to want to get rid of poor Leonard, that I may attend to his dinners. Yet Henry had spoken in perfect good-humour.
Henry came down with a little sister in each hand. They were his especial darlings; and with a touch of fatherly fondness, he tried to compensate to them for their sequestration from the drawing-room, the consequence of Averil not having established her authority enough to keep their spirits from growing too riotous for Leonard's weakness. Indeed, their chatter was Henry's sole enlivenment, for Averil was constantly making excursions to ask what her patient would eat, and watch its success; and but for his pleasure in the little girls popping about him, he would have had a meal as dull as it was unsettled. As soon as the strawberries were eaten, he walked out through the window with them clinging to him, and Averil returned to her post.
'Some music, Ave,' said Leonard, with an instinctive dread of her conversation.
She