'I don't think they would,' said Fred; 'but I am not satisfied. Recollect and tell me clearly, are they convinced that this is only recovering slowly-I do not mean that; I know too well that this is not a thing to be got rid of; but do they think that she is going to be as well as usual?'
'I do,' said Henrietta, 'and you know I am more used to her illness than any of them. Bennet and I were agreeing to-day that, considering how bad the spasms were, and how much fatigue she had been going through, we could not expect her to get on faster.'
'You do? But that is not Aunt Geoffrey.'
'O! Aunt Geoffrey is anxious, and expected her to get on faster, just like Busy Bee expecting everything to be so quick; but I am sure you could not get any more information from her than from me, and impressions-I am sure you may trust mine, used as I am to watch mamma.'
Fred asked no more; but it was observable that from that day he never lost one of his mother's little notes, placing them as soon as read in his pocket-book, and treasuring them carefully. He also begged Henrietta to lend him a miniature of her mother, taken at the time of her marriage. It represented her in all her youthful loveliness, with the long ringlets and plaits of dark brown hair hanging on her neck, the arch suppressed smile on her lips, and the laughing light in her deep blue eye. He looked at it for a little while, and then asked Henrietta if she thought that she could find, among the things sent from Rocksand which had not yet been unpacked, another portrait, taken in the earlier months of her widowhood, when she had in some partial degree recovered from her illness, but her life seemed still to hang on a thread. Mrs. Vivian, at whose especial desire it had been taken, had been very fond of it, and had always kept it in her room, and Fred was very anxious to see it again. After a long search, with Bennet's help, Henrietta found it, and brought it to him. Thin, wan, and in the deep black garments, there was much more general resemblance to her present appearance in this than in the portrait of the beautiful smiling bride. 'And yet,' said Fred, as he compared them, 'do not you think, Henrietta, that there is more of mamma in the first?'
'I see what you mean,' said Henrietta. 'You know it is by a much better artist.'
'Yes,' said he, 'the other is like enough in feature,-more so certainly to anything we have ever seen: but what a difference! And yet what is it? Look! Her eyes generally have something melancholy in their look, and yet I am sure those bright happy ones put me much more in mind of hers than these, looking so weighed down with sorrow. And the sweet smile, that is quite her own!'
'If you could but see her now, Fred,' said Henrietta, 'I think you would indeed say so. She has now and then a beautiful little pink flush, that lights up her eyes as well as her cheeks; and when she smiles and talks about those old times with papa, she does really look just like the miniature, all but her thinness.'
'I do not half like to hear of all that talking about my father,' murmured Fred to himself as he leant back. Henrietta at first opened her eyes; then a sudden perception of his meaning flashed over her, and she began to speak of something else as fast as she could.
Uncle Geoffrey came on Saturday afternoon, and after paying a minute's visit to Fred, had a conference of more than an hour with his sister-in-law. Fred did not seem pleased with his sister's information that 'it was on business,' and only was in a slight degree re-assured by being put in mind that there was always something to settle at Lady-day. Henrietta thought her uncle looked grave; and as she was especially anxious to prevent either herself or Fred from being frightened, she would not leave him alone in Fred's room, knowing full well that no questions would be asked except in private-none at least of the description which she dreaded.
All Fred attempted was the making his long-mediated request that he might visit his mother, and Uncle Geoffrey undertook to see whether it was possible. Numerous messages passed, and at length it was arranged that on Sunday, just before afternoon service, when the house was quiet, his uncle should help him to her room, where his aunt would read to them both.
Frederick made quite a preparation for what was to him a great undertaking. He sat counting the hours all the morning; and when at length the time arrived, his heart beat so violently, that it seemed to take away all the little strength he had. His uncle came in, but waited a few moments; then said, with some hesitation, 'Fred, you must be prepared to see her a good deal altered.'
'Yes,' said Fred, impatiently.
'And take the greatest care not to agitate her. Can you be trusted? I do not ask it for your own sake.'
'Yes,' said Fred, resolutely.
'Then come.'
And in process of time Fred was at her door. There he quitted his uncle's arm, and came forward alone to the large easy chair where she sat by the fire-side. She started joyfully forward, and soon he was on one knee before her, her arms round his neck, her tears dropping on his face, and a quiet sense of excessive happiness felt by both. Then rising, he sank back into another great chair, which his sister had arranged for him close to hers, and too much out of breath to speak, he passively let Henrietta make him comfortable there; while holding his mother's hand, he kept his eyes fixed upon her, and she, anxious only for him, patted his cushions, offered her own, and pushed her footstool towards him.
A few words passed between Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Langford outside the door.
'I still think it a great risk,' said she.
'But I should not feel justified in preventing it,' was his answer, 'only do not leave them long alone.' Then opening the door he called, 'Henrietta, there is the last bell.' And Henrietta, much against her will, was obliged to go with him to Church.
'Good-bye, my dear,' said her mother. 'Think of us prisoners in the right way at Church, and not in the wrong one.'
Strangely came the sound of the Church bell to their ears through the window, half open to admit the breezy breath of spring; the cawing of the rooks and the song of the blackbird came with it; the sky was clear and blue, the buds were bursting into life.
'How very lovely it is!' added she.
Fred made a brief reply, but without turning his head to the window. His eyes, his thoughts, his whole soul, were full of the contemplation of what was to him a thousand times more lovely,-that frail wasted form, namely, whose hand he held. The delicate pink colour which Henrietta had described was on her cheek, contrasting with the ivory whiteness of the rest of her face; the blue eyes shone with a sweet subdued brightness under their long black lashes; the lips smiled, though languidly yet as sunnily as ever; the dark hair lay in wavy lines along the sides of her face; and but for the helplessness with which the figure rested in the chair, there was less outward token of suffering than he had often seen about her,-more appearance almost of youth and beauty. But it was not an earthly beauty; there was something about it which filled him with a kind of indescribable undefined awe, together with dread of a sorrow towards which he shrank from looking. She thought him fatigued with the exertion he had made, and allowed him to rest, while she contemplated with pleasure even the slight advances which he had already made in shaking off the traces of illness.
The silence was not broken till Aunt Geoffrey came in, just as the last stroke of the Church-bell died away, bringing in her hand a fragrant spray of the budding sweet-briar.
'The bees are coming out with you, Freddy,' said she. 'I have just been round the garden watching them revelling in the crocuses.'
'How delicious!' said Mrs. Frederick Langford, to whom she had offered the sweet-briar. 'Give it to him, poor fellow; he is quite knocked up with his journey.'
'O no, not in the least, mamma, thank you,' said Fred, sitting up vigorously; 'you do not know how strong I am growing.' And then turning to the window, he made an effort, and began observing on her rook's nest, as she called it, and her lilac buds. Then came a few more cheerful questions and comments on the late notes, and then Mrs. Frederick Langford proposed that the reading of the service should begin.
Aunt Geoffrey, kneeling at the table, read the prayers, and Fred took the alternate verses of the Psalms. It was the last day of the month, and as he now and then raised his eyes to his mother's face, he saw her lips follow the glorious responses in those psalms of praise, and a glistening in her lifted eyes such as he could never forget.
'He healeth those that are broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.'
'He telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names.'
He read this verse as he had done many a time before, without thinking of the exceeding beauty of the manner in which it is connected with the former one; but in after years he never read it again without that whole room rising before his eyes, and above all his mother's face. It was a sweet soft light, and not a gloom, that rested round that scene in his memory; springtide sights and sounds; the beams of the declining sun, with its quiet spring
