A silence of long duration fell between them.  She fancied he would like to sleep, and gently rose to slip away, that she might consult with Mrs. Lappett about putting up some tentcover.  He asked her if she was going.  ‘Not home,’ she said.  His hand moved, but stopped.  It seemed to have meant to detain her.  She looked at a white fleece that came across the sun, desiring to conjure it to stay and shadow him.  It sailed by.  She raised her parasol.

His eyelids were shut, and she thought him asleep.  Meditating on her unanswered question of Miss Kathleen’s likeness to Patrick, Jane imagined a possibly greater likeness to her patient, and that he did not speak of his family’s exclamations on the subject because of Kathleen’s being so good-looking a girl.  For if good-looking, a sister must resemble these handsome features here, quiescent to inspection in their marble outlines as a corse.  So might he lie on the battle-field, with no one to watch over him!

While she watched, sitting close beside him to shield his head from the sunbeams, her heart began to throb before she well knew the secret of it.  She had sight of a tear that grew big under the lashes of each of his eyelids, and rolled heavily.  Her own eyes overflowed.

The fit of weeping was momentary, April’s, a novelty with her.  She accused her silly visions of having softened her.  A hasty smoothing to right and left removed the traces; they were unseen; and when she ventured to look at him again there was no sign of fresh drops falling.  His eyelids kept shut.

The arrival of her diurnal basket of provisions offered a refreshing intervention of the commonplace.  Bright air had sharpened his appetite:  he said he had been sure it would, and anticipated cheating the doctor of a part of the sentence which condemned him to lie on his back up to the middle of June, a log.  Jane was hungry too, and they feasted together gaily, talking of Kathleen on her journey, her strange impressions and her way of proclaiming them, and of Patrick and where he might be now; ultimately of Captain Con and Mrs. Adister.

‘He has broken faith with her,’ Philip said sternly.  ’She will have the right to tell him so.  He never can be anything but a comic politician.  Still he was bound to consult his wife previous to stepping before the public.  He knows that he married a fortune.’

‘A good fortune,’ said Jane.

Philip acquiesced.  ’She is an excellent woman, a model of uprightness; she has done him all the good in the world, and here is he deceiving her, lying—­there is no other word:  and one lie leads to another.  When he married a fortune he was a successful adventurer.  The compact was understood.  His duty as a man of honour is to be true to his bond and serve the lady.  Falseness to his position won’t wash him clean of the title.’

Jane pleaded for Captain Con.  ‘He is chivalrously attentive to her.’

‘You have read his letter,’ Philip replied.