muffled figure of his bride, and led her up-stairs to the sitting-room, where, divesting her of hat, cloak, muff, and respirator, he laid her on the sofa, and looked anxiously for her reassuring smile before he even seemed to perceive his sister or left room for her greeting.
The squarely-made, high-complexioned, handsome Averil Ward was entirely gone. In Averil May, Ethel saw delicately refined and sharpened features, dark beautiful eyes, enlarged, softened, and beaming with perilous lustre, a transparently white blue-veined skin, with a lovely roseate tint, deepening or fading with every word, look, or movement, and a smile painfully sweet and touching, as first of the three, the invalid found voice for thanks and inquiries for all.
‘Quite well,’ said Ethel. ‘But papa has been most unluckily sent for to Whitford, and can’t get home till the last train.’
‘It may be as well,’ said Tom: ‘we must have perfect quiet till after the night’s rest.’
‘May I see one else to-night?’ she wistfully asked.
‘Let us see how you are when you have had some coffee and are rested.’
‘Very well,’ she said, with a gentle submission, that was as new a sight as Tom’s tenderness; ‘but indeed I am not tired; and it is so pretty and pleasant. Is this really Dr. Spencer’s old house? Can there be such a charming room in it?’
‘I did not think so,’ said Tom, looking in amazement at the effect produced by the bright modern grate with its cheerful fire, the warm delicate tints of the furniture, the appliances for comfort and ornament already giving a home look.
‘I know this is in the main your doing, Ethel; but who was the hand?’
‘All of us were hands,’ said Ethel; ‘but Flora was the moving spring. She went to London for a week about it.’
‘Mrs. Rivers! Oh, how good!’ said Averil, flushing with surprise; then raising herself, as her coffee was brought in a dainty little service, she exclaimed, ‘And oh, if it were possible, I should say that was my dear old piano!’
‘Yes,’ said Ethel, ‘we thought you would like it; and Hector Ernescliffe gave Mrs. Wright a new one for it.’
This was almost too much. Averil’s lip trembled, but she looked up into her husband’s face, and made an answer, which would have been odd had she not been speaking to his thought.
‘Never mind! It is only happiness and the kindness.’ And she drank the coffee with an effort, and smiled at him again, as she asked, ‘Where is Ella?’
‘At our house,’ said Ethel; ‘we mean her to be there for the present.’
Knowing with whom Ella must be, and fearing to show discontent with the mandate of patience, Averil again began to admire. ‘What a beautiful chair! Look, Tom! is it not exquisite? Whose work is it?’
‘Gertrude’s.’
‘That is the most fabulous thing of all,’ said Tom, walking round it. ‘Daisy! Her present, not her work?’
‘Her work, every stitch. It has been a race with time.’ The gratification of Averil’s flush and smile was laid up by Ethel for Gertrude’s reward; but it was plain that Tom wanted complete rest for his wife, and Ethel only waited to install her in the adjoining bedroom, which was as delightfully fitted up as the first apartment. Averil clung to her for the instant they were alone together, and whispered, ‘Oh, it is all so sweet! Don’t think I don’t feel it! But you see it is all I can do for him to be as quiet as I can! Say so, please!’
Ethel felt the throb of the heart, and knew to whom she was to say so; but Tom’s restless approaching step made Averil detach herself, and sink into an arm-chair. Ethel left her, feeling that the short clasp of their arms had sealed their sisterhood here and for ever.
‘It is too sad, too beautiful to be talked about,’ she said to Gertrude, who was anxiously on the watch for tidings.
Obedient as Averil was, she had not understood her husband’s desire that she should seek her pillow at once. She was feeling brisk and fresh, and by no means ready for captivity, and she presently came forth again with her soft, feeble, noiseless step; but she had nearly retreated again, feeling herself mistaken and bewildered, for in the drawing-room stood neither Tom nor his sisters, but a stranger—a dark, grave, thoughtful man of a singularly resolute and settled cast of countenance. The rustle of her dress made him look up as she turned. ‘Ave!’ he exclaimed; and as their eyes met, the light in those brown depths restored the whole past. She durst not trust herself to speak, as her head rested on his shoulder, his arms were round her; only as her husband came on the scene with a gesture of surprise, she said, ‘Indeed, I did not mean it! I did not know he was here.’
‘I might have known you could not be kept apart if I once let Leonard in,’ he said, as he arranged her on the sofa, and satisfied himself that there were no tokens of the repressed agitation that left such dangerous effects. ‘Will you both be very good if I leave you to be happy together?’ he presently added, after a few indifferent words had passed.
Averil looked wistfully after him, as if he were wanted to complete full felicity even in Leonard’s presence. How little would they once have thought that her first words to her brother would be, ‘Oh, was there ever any one like him?’
‘We owe it all to him,’ said Leonard.
‘So kind,’ added Averil, ‘not to be vexed, though he dreaded our meeting so much; and you see I could not grieve him by making a fuss. But this is nice!’ she added, with a sigh going far beyond the effect of the homely word.
‘You are better. Ella said so.’
‘I am feeling well to-night. Come, let me look at you, and learn your face.’
He knelt down beside her, and she stroked back the hair, which had fulfilled his wish that she should find it as long, though much darker than of old. Posture and action recalled that meeting, when her couch had been his prison bed, and the cold white prison walls had frowned on them; yet even in the rosy light of the cheerful room there was on them the solemnity of an approaching doom.
‘Where is the old face?’ Averil said. ‘You look as you did in the fever. Your smile brings back something of
