When she returned she looked whiter and more shrivelled than before.
"Is he worse to-night?" asked Sir James, gently.
"It is the pain," she said, in a muffled voice; "and we can't touch
it--yet. He mustn't have any more morphia--yet."
She sat down once more. Sir James, the best of gossips, glided off into
talk of London, and of old common friends, trying to amuse and distract
her. But he realized that she scarcely listened to him, and that he was
talking to a woman whose life was being ground away between a last
affection and the torment it had power to cause her. A new Lady Lucy,
indeed! Had any one ever dared to pity her before?
Meanwhile, five miles off, a girl whom he loved as a daughter was eating
her heart out for sorrow over this mother and son--consumed, as he
guessed, with the wild desire to offer them, in any sacrificial mode
they pleased, her youth and her sweet self. In one way or another he had
found out that Hugh Roughsedge had been sent about his business--of
course, with all the usual softening formulae.
And now there was a kind of mute conflict going on between himself and
Mrs. Colwood on the one side, and Diana on the other side.
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