But, in addition to the loss of her brother, Alice Claxton had great cause for anxiety and mental disturbance. John had returned from his last business tour weary, dispirited, and obviously very much out of health. The brightness had faded from his blue eyes, the lines round them and his mouth seemed to have doubled both in number and depth, his stoop was considerably increased, and instead of his frank hearty bearing, he crept about, when he thought he was unobserved, with dawdling footsteps, and with an air of lassitude pervading his every movement. He strove his best to disguise his condition from Alice; he struggled hard to talk to her in his old cheerful way, to take interest in the details of her management of the house and garden, to hear little Bell her lessons, and to play about with the child on days when the weather rendered it possible for him to go into the shrubbery. But even during the time when Alice was talking or reading to him, or when he was romping with the child, he would suddenly subside into a kind of half-dazed state, his eyes staring blankly before him, his hands dropped listlessly by his side; he would not reply until he had been spoken to twice or thrice, and would then look up as though he had either not heard or not understood the question addressed to him. If it was painful to Alice to see her husband in that state, it was far more distressing to observe his struggles to recover his consciousness, and his attempts at being more like his old self. In his endeavours to talk and laugh, to rally his young wife after his usual fashion, and to comprehend and be interested in the playful babble of the child, there was a ghastly galvanised vivacity most painful to behold.