Amnesiacs -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
As she sat there listening to the roaring of the gale outside, and
watching with satisfaction the evident coming of sleep, she said to
herself that it might easily be that some new thing had come back to
him which he would be unwilling she should know about, at least until
his own mind was clearer. He might speak with less reserve to Vereker.
She would give the doctor leave to talk to him to-morrow. Fear of
what she would hear may have influenced her in this.
So when, sooner than she had expected, she caught the sound of the
first breath of indisputable sleep, she rose and slipped away quietly,
and as she lay down again to rest again asked herself the question:
Was it the galvanism that had done it?
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOW FENWICK AND VEREKER WENT FOR A WALK, AND MORE MEMORIES CAME BACK.
HOW FENWICK WAS A MILLIONAIRE, OR THEREABOUTS. OF A CLUE THAT KILLED
ITSELF. HARRISSON'S AFFAIR NOW! BOTHER THE MILLIONS! IS NOT LOVE
BETTER THAN MONEY? ONLY FENWICK'S NAME WASN'T HARRISSON NEITHER
"We thought it best to let you have your sleep out, dear. Sally
agreed. No, leave the pot alone. Mrs. Lobjoit will make some fresh
coffee."
"Who's the other cup?"
"Vereker. He came in to breakfast; to see if we were blown away."
"I see. Of course. Where are they now?"
"They?... oh, him and Sally! They said they'd go and see if Tishy
and her husband were blown away."
"Well, I have had my sleep out with a vengeance. It's a quarter
to ten."
"Never mind, darling. So much the better. Let's have a look at
you...." And the little self-explanatory colloquy ends with Rosalind
kissing her husband and examining him with anxious eyes. She sees
a face less haggard than the one she saw last night, for is it not
daylight and has not the wind fallen to a mere cheerful breeze you can
quite stand upright in, leaning slightly seawards? And are not the
voices and the footsteps of a new day outside, and the swift exchanges
of sunlight and cloud-shadow that are chasing each other off the
British Channel? And has not a native of eighty years of age (which
he ignores) just opened the street door on his own responsibility
and shouted along the passage that pra'ans are large this morning? He
is more an institution than a man, and is freely spoken of as "The
Shrimps." A flavour of a Triton who has got too dry on the beach comes
in with the sea air, and also a sense of prawns, emptied from a wooden
measure they have been honourably shaken down into, falling on a dish
held out to receive them by an ambassador of four, named by Sally
little Miss Lobjoit, the youngest of her race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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