The blind still flapped to and fro, but the golden streak had moved. A blackbird was piping in the clear air; she could hear the children's voices from the garden. The room had the same tranquil air as before, but the soft reposeful element had passed away; Caroline's eyes were closed, but she neither slept nor dreamed. Remembrance was with her again, and with remembrance, heartache, yearning, and regret. CHAPTER XVI In June, when the gardens at Yelverton were glorious with roses (and Caroline's one task seemed to be hunting the children out of the strawberry-beds), Cuthbert Baynhurst and his wife returned to town. They did not do this voluntarily; it was literally to see his mother die that Cuthbert was summoned back to England. Rupert Haverford himself wrote the message that brought his half-brother home. He himself was on the eve of sailing for the United States when his mother's condition became so serious. He had promised Mrs. Brenton to spend one night at Yelverton before leaving for America, but of course all his arrangements were upset. "It is impossible to describe to you the suffering my poor mother is enduring just now," he wrote. "She is amazingly brave, and her brain is as active as ever. It sounds cruel to say it, but I almost regret this, for she persists in fatiguing herself. Only yesterday she worked for three hours." Another time he wrote-- "She has been very ill for some time, how ill no one but she herself has known; but undoubtedly she has hastened matters to the present crisis by her unhappiness about Cuthbert's marriage. It was a great shock to her; she craves for him, and seems to torture herself with vain and unreasonable jealousy. I am most unhappy about her.... It is a bitter thing to feel that I have not the gift of ministering to her!" All these letters passed into Caroline's hands. Usually she read them out in the garden, and when she was alone. She was well again, but very restless in these days. After that nervous breakdown Mrs. Brenton endeavoured to treat her as a kind of invalid, but she quickly abandoned this as a hopeless undertaking, and indeed the girl very speedily picked up her colour and her strength. But she was changed; her calm, determined, practical mood was gone altogether. There were times when Mrs. Brenton was puzzled by her manner, and nothing was more difficult for her to understand than the friendship which appeared to have sprung up between Caroline and Sir Samuel Broxbourne. Sir Samuel was always turning up at Yelverton at unexpected moments. As the Brentons had known him since he was a boy he was outside the category of guests; but though Mrs. Brenton was hospitality itself, she really chafed a little at his constant visits, and if she could only have imagined that he was indirectly or directly connected with what she in her plain-spoken way called Camilla's "wickedness," he would have found himself shut out of Yelverton in particularly quick time.