"Her leddyship will be ill," he mumbled to himself over the fire. "It’s a terrible strain for her leddyship." "Jennings!" "Yes, yer leddyship." "Look again! I thought I heard them—this time." Jennings rose with difficulty, pushed aside the heavy draperies that screened the library windows, and peered through the fog. "Not yet—yer leddyship." He adjusted the curtains carefully with his shaking fingers. "Will I bring the tea, yer leddyship?" "No, Jennings, I will have tea with my son and his young wife." "His lordship may not arrive for sometime—yer leddyship may be faint." "Yes, but nevertheless, I am firmly resolved to wait, Jennings." She closed her eyes with an expression of resignation. "Very well, yer leddyship," said Jennings, in a heart-broken voice. He left the room noiselessly. Lady Canning sat motionless in her large arm-chair near the fire. Approaching seventy years of age, there were still remnants of beauty in those fine, delicately cut features, slightly pinched through illness. Her calm, impassive face seemed to have outlived every stage of emotion, or lived through the emotional stage, without having experienced the emotions. For twenty years since the death of her husband she had maintained the strictest seclusion. A cobweb of ivory-tinted lace rested on her white, carefully dressed hair, and a fichu of the same was drawn over her attenuated shoulders. The room in which she sat was a proper frame for her personality. It was filled with objects, some of rare value, that had mellowed with age. The years had taken from everything its element of aggressiveness. The tapestries, the paintings, the books, the furniture, blended into harmony of soft and faded hues. Lady Canning suffered considerable excitement at the prospect of seeing her only son once more, after an absence of ten months, not to speak of a certain anxiety regarding her daughter-in-law. Thurston had written, "I will not describe Indiana. I wish you to form your own impressions."