She seemed to be quite hopeless, resigned to any twist or turn of fate. Here was a broken woman, indeed, and the spectacle was torturing. He had never understood her as a bright young girl and a bride of nineteen. He did not understand her now. A man of his oak-like qualities could not grasp the nature of a woman who bent as a reed before each puff of wind.
It was hard to utter even a commonplace farewell. She held him by her very helplessness. But the rapid trot of a horse caught his ears, and, whilst he stood irresolute, he saw Constance alighting from the dog-cart. His wife looked out, too. They heard their daughter laughingly regret that she could not ask Mr. Pyne to luncheon--meals were irregular events just then.
Brand felt a timid hand grasping his, and a choking sob proclaimed that Constance's mother was crying.
He stooped with a motion that was almost a caress.
"Don't cry," he said. "I cannot bear it."
"I can bear anything, Stephen," she sobbed, "if only you will let me stay with you forever."
"Do you mean that, Nanette?" he gasped, incredulously.
"I have prayed, yes, dared to pray, that it might be so ever since I saw my child. She has brought us together again. Let us not part, for her sake, and for mine, Stephen, if it is not too late."
So Constance, hastening up the garden path, could not believe her eyes when she saw her father lift her mother into his arms and kiss her.
Mary, the maid, never ceased wondering why every other member of her sex in Laburnum Cottage should be tearful yet ridiculously happy that afternoon. Mrs. Vansittart wept, and Miss Constance wept, and Miss Enid wept when she came in, whilst Mrs. Sheppard was weeping at intervals all day.
Nevertheless they were all delighted in their woe, and Mrs. Sheppard, although she cooked a tremendous dinner, never scolded her once.
It was also a remarkable thing that the invalid lady should insist that she was strong enough to come downstairs that evening. She did not eat a great deal, poor thing, but she looked ever so much better, and seemed to find all her pleasure in gazing alternately at the master and Miss Constance, and in listening to every word they said.
In the garden, next night, the moon being now very brilliant indeed, Pyne said to Constance that the step-aunt idea having fizzled out he guessed that the lady who figured in that unclassified degree of relationship would pose more satisfactorily as a mother-in-law.