Sir Hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was alone, without speaking. "That is nice for me," he then said. "But how miserable,--for you,--it must have been. What a shame that you should have been left alone in this dull place,--and this wretched weather, too!--Did you ever see such weather." He looked past her at the rain.
"It has been wretched," said Amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the past: nothing seemed wretched now.
"And you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," He came beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she also turned and they looked out at the rain together.
"A filthy day," said Sir Hugh, "I can't bear to think that this is what you have been doing, all alone."
"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."
"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"
She had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude, you know," she was able to smile.
"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"
"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and say that you are glad to see me."
In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course, she was glad to see him.
"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not go down and see Amabel?--I don't believe she will mind.--I believe that, perhaps, she'll be pleased.--I know that I want to go very much.--So here I am:--very glad to be here--with dear Amabel."
She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.
He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds; the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never come so near as now when Sir Hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far light--was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover it for ever.