To give the devil his due, Nick had an innate tact which told him when to stop, and perhaps at this time Mademoiselle’s superciliousness made him subside the more quickly.  After Monsieur de St. Gre had explained to me the horrors of the indigo pest and the futility of sugar raising, he turned to his daughter.

“’Toinette, where is Madame Clive?” he asked.  The girl looked up, startled into life and interest at once.

“Oh, papa,” she cried in French, “we are so worried about her, mamma and I. It was the day you went away, the day these gentlemen came, that we thought she would take an airing.  And suddenly she became worse.”

Monsieur de St. Gre turned with concern to his wife.

“I do not know what it is, Philippe,” said that lady; “it seems to be mental.  The loss of her husband weighs upon her, poor lady.  But this is worse than ever, and she will lie for hours with her face turned to the wall, and not even Antoinette can arouse her.”

“I have always been able to comfort her before,” said Antoinette, with a catch in her voice.

I took little account of what was said after that, my only notion being to think the problem out for myself, and alone.  As I was going to my room Nick stopped me.

“Come into the garden, Davy,” he said.

“When I have had my siesta,” I answered.

“When you have had your siesta!” he cried; “since when did you begin to indulge in siestas?”

“To-day,” I replied, and left him staring after me.

I reached my room, bolted the door, and lay down on my back to think.  Little was needed to convince me now that Mrs. Clive was Mrs. Temple, and thus the lady’s relapse when she heard that her son was in the house was accounted for.  Instead of forming a plan, my thoughts drifted from that into pity for her, and my memory ran back many years to the text of good Mr. Mason’s sermon, “I have refined thee, but not with silver, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.”  What must Sarah Temple have suffered since those days!  I remembered her in her prime, in her beauty, in her selfishness, in her cruelty to those whom she might have helped, and I wondered the more at the change which must have come over the woman that she had won the affections of this family, that she had gained the untiring devotion of Mademoiselle Antoinette.  Her wit might not account for it, for that had been cruel.  And something of the agony of the woman’s soul as she lay in torment, facing the wall, thinking of her son under the same roof, of a life misspent and irrevocable, I pictured.

A stillness crept into the afternoon like the stillness of night.  The wide house was darkened and silent, and without a sunlight washed with gold filtered through the leaves.  There was a drowsy hum of bees, and in the distance the occasional languishing note of a bird singing what must have been a cradle-song.  My mind wandered, and shirked the task that was set to it.