Her naming of the old servant familiarly melted him.  ’You will not bear to hear praise or thanks.’

’If I deserved them.  I should like you to call on Dr. Buxton; he will tell you more than we can.  He drove with me the first day, after I had sent you the local doctor’s report.  I had it from the messenger, his assistant.’

Weyburn knew Dr. Buxton’s address.  He begged her to stay and take some nourishment; ventured a remark on her wasted look.

‘It is poor fare in cottages.’

‘I have been feeding on better than bread and meat,’ she said.’  I should have eaten if I had felt appetite.  My looks will recover, such as they are.  I hope I have grown out of them; they are a large part of the bondage of women.  You would like to see me safe into some conveyance.  Go up-stairs for a few minutes; I will wait here.’

He obeyed her.  Passing from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living, they were united in his heart.

Her brevity of tone, and her speech, so practical upon a point of need, under a crisis of distress, reminded him of Lady Charlotte at the time of the groom’s arrival with her letter.

Aminta was in no hurry to drive.  She liked walking and looking down on London, she said.

’My friend and schoolmate, Selina Collett, comes to me at Whitsuntide.  We have taken a house on the Upper Thames, above Marlow.  You will come and see us, if you can be persuaded to leave your boys.  We have a boathouse, and a bathing-plank for divers.  The stream is quiet there between rich meadows.  It seems to flow as if it thought.  I am not poetical; I tell you only my impression.  You shall be a great deal by yourself, as men prefer to be.’

‘As men are forced to be—­I beg!’ said he.  ’Division is against my theories.’

’We might help, if we understood one another, I have often fancied.  I know something of your theories.  I should much like to hear you some day on the scheme of the school in Switzerland, and also on the schoolmaster’s profession.  She whom we have lost was full of it, and spoke of it to me as much as her weakness would permit.  The subject seemed to give her strength.’

‘She has always encouraged me,’ said Weyburn.’  I have lost her, but I shall feel that she is not absent.  She had ideas of her own about men and women.’

‘Some she mentioned.’

‘And about marriage?’

‘That too.’

Aminta shook herself out of a sudden stupor.

’Her mind was very clear up to the last hour upon all the subjects interesting her son.  She at one time regretted his not being a soldier, for the sake of his father’s memory.  Then she learned to think he could do more for the world as the schoolmaster.  She said you can persuade.’

’We had our talks.  She would have the reason, if she was to be won.  I like no other kind of persuasion.’

’I long to talk over the future school with you.  That is, to hear your plans.’