Chapter XLVII. "I Have No Word or Look to Remember" - Page 2

they might be so given up to hard work at a dreadful time that there's been no chance for anything to get out. When people's hanging over a man's bed at the end, it's as if everything stopped but that--that's stopping for all time."

After luncheon the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with a suggestion of endlessness. It was a sort of mist itself, and became a damp shadow among the bare branches of trees which soon began to drip.

"You have been walking about all morning, and you are tired, dear," Lady Anstruthers said to her. "Won't you go to your room and rest, Betty?"

Yes, she would go to her room, she said. Some new books had arrived from London this morning, and she would look over them. She talked a little about her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Ughtred came over to her and stood close to her side holding her hand and stroking it, she smiled at him sweetly--the smile he adored. He stroked the hand and softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he lifted it to his lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion.

"I love you so much, Aunt Betty," he cried. "We both love you so much. Something makes me love you to-day more than ever I did before. It almost makes me cry. I love you so."

She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed him close and hard. He held his head back a little and looked into the blue under her lashes.

"I love your eyes," he said. "Anyone would love your eyes, Aunt Betty. But what is the matter with them? You are not crying at all, but--oh! what is the matter?"

"No, I am not crying at all," she said, and smiled--almost laughed.

But after she had kissed him again she took her books and went upstairs.

She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was alone in her room. She drew a long chair before the window and watched the slow falling of the rain. There is nothing like it--that slow weeping of the rain on an English autumn day. Soft and light though it was, the park began to look sodden. The bare trees held out their branches like imploring arms, the brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rain was drip-dripping at Mount Dunstan--upon the desolate great house--upon the village--upon the mounds and ancient stone tombs in the churchyard, sinking into the earth--sinking deep, sucked in by the clay beneath--the cold damp clay. She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thought come to her--the cold damp clay? She would not listen to it, she would think of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of sound, of the rush of fierce life there--of her father and mother. She tried to force herself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of black things, which, seen from the windows of its monstrous buildings, seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousand