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er present convalescent never visited his discomforts upon her, but was always patient and good-humoured, smiling whenever he could, like his father before him, as if, according to the pretty Spanish saying, the sun had shone on his cradle at his birth. His unselfish nature had made him a little uneasy when with cooler senses he remembered Clement's hint, while love and instinct alike made him feel utterly unable to dispense with his motherly sister, but when she had assured him that nothing could make him leave him as yet, and when Sister Constance was known to be at Bexley, he threw it from his mind, and was perfectly happy and contented.
He could still exert no attention, could neither read nor be read to, nor occupy himself in any way; but he was amused by talk around him, and companionship was never lacking. Wilmet, whose forte had never been conversation, found herself in a stream of small talk with inquiring friends of all degrees in the hierarchy; but was most at her ease when the female Harewoods were prattling good-humoured inconsequent chatter. Willie lying on the grass murmuring with Lance, or John lured into stories of Indian surveying adventures in the cause of the Ordnance Map. And when she was carried off to have her meals with the family, she had put herself so entirely at the mercy of circumstances, that she never seemed scandalised by their crazy unpunctuality, their wonderful free and easy ways, and customs of putting things to every use but the right, did not censure Grace or Lucy for dawdling and gossiping whole mornings away, and took it naturally when their mother inquired after her eldest brother by the alternate names of Festus and Frank, and when she mentioned Lance's disaster as his coup d'etat. And here was the last of these pleasant afternoons, full of still sweet sounds, midsummer hum above, the soft ripple of the water close by, the cawing of the rooks in the Close-- all such peace, that her heart quailed as she looked forward to the din of the High Street at Bexley, and sh