“So I do, dearest mother—­so I do,” replied the young man, running hurriedly down the steps and then slipping his arm about her.  “You came a minute or two earlier than I expected you, or I should have met you in the drive.”

Half supporting, half carrying her, he led the way into the house and placed her on a sofa in the long drawing-room.

“I am afraid the journey has been too much for you,” he said tenderly.  “Shall I tell Abednego to bring you a glass of wine.”

“Kesiah will mix me an egg and a spoonful of sherry, dear, she knows just how much is good for me.”

Kesiah, still grasping her small black bag, went into the dining-room and returned, bearing a beaten egg, which she handed to her sister.  In her walk there was the rigid austerity of a saint who has adopted saintliness not from inclination, but from the force of a necessity against which rebellion has been in vain.  Her plain, prominent features wore, from habit, a look of sullen martyrdom that belied her natural kindness of heart; and even her false brown front was arranged in little hard, flat curls, as though an artificial ugliness were less reprehensible in her sight than an artificial beauty.

In the midst of the long room flooded with sunshine, the little lady reclined on her couch and sipped gently from the glass Kesiah had handed her.  The tapestried furniture was all in soft rose, a little faded from age, and above the high white wainscoting on the plastered walls, this same delicate colour was reflected in the rich brocaded gowns in the family portraits.  In the air there was the faint sweet scent of cedar logs that burned on the old andirons.

“So you came all the way home to see your poor useless mother,” murmured Mrs. Gay, shielding her cheek from the firelight with a peacock hand-screen.

“I wanted to see for myself how you stand it down here—­and, by Jove, it’s worse even than I imagined!  How the deuce have you managed to drag out twenty years in a wilderness like this among a tribe of barbarians?”

“It is a great comfort to me, dear, to think that I came here on your uncle’s account and that I am only following his wishes in making the place my home.  He loved the perfect quiet and restfulness of it.”

“Quiet!  With that population of roosters making the dawn hideous!  I’d choose the quiet of Piccadilly before that of a barnyard.”

“You aren’t used to country noises yet, and I suppose at first they are trying.”

“Do you drive?  Do you walk?  How do you amuse yourself?”

“One doesn’t have amusement when one is a hopeless invalid; one has only medicines.  No, the roads are too heavy for driving except for a month or two in the summer.  I can’t walk of course, because of my heart, and as there has been no man on the place for ten years, I do not feel that it is safe for Kesiah to go off the lawn by herself.  Once she got into quite a dreadful state about her