‘Oh, Maurice, how did you know? But you are not going? I have so much to talk over with you.’ ‘Yes, I must go; and you must be still. Indeed I will watch over Gilbert as though he were mine. Yes, even more. Don’t speak again, Albinia, I desire you will not. Good-bye.’ That lecture had been the most wholesome treatment she had yet received; she ceased to give way without effort to restless thoughts and cares, and was much less refractory. When at last Lucy and Sophia were admitted, Winifred found perils that she had not anticipated. Lucy was indeed supremely and girlishly happy: but it was Sophy whose eye Albinia sought with anxiety, and that eye was averted. Her cheek was cold like that of a doll when Albinia touched it eagerly with her lips; and when Lucy admonished her to kiss the dear little brother, she fairly turned and ran out of the room. ‘Poor Sophy!’ said Lucy. ‘Never mind her, mamma, but she is odder than ever, since baby has been born. When Eweretta came up and told us, she hid her face and cried; and when grandmamma wanted to make us promise to love him with all our hearts, and not make any difference, she would only say, “I wont!”’ ‘We will leave him to take care of that, Lucy,’ said Albinia. But though she spoke cheerfully, Winifred was not surprised, after a little interval, to hear sounds like stifled weeping. Almost every home subject was so dangerous, that whenever Mrs. Ferrars wanted to make cheerful, innocent conversation, she began to talk of her visit to Ireland and the beautiful Galway coast, and the O’Mores of Ballymakilty, till Albinia grew quite sick of the names of the whole clan of thirty-six cousins, and thought, with her aunts, that Winifred was too Irish. Yet, at any other time, the histories would have made her sometimes laugh, and sometimes cry, but the world was sadly out of joint with her. There was a sudden change when, for the first time her eye rested on the lawn, and she beheld the work of drainage. The light glanced in her eye, the colour rose on her cheek, and she exclaimed, ‘How kind of Edmund!’ Winifred must needs give her husband his share. ‘Ah! you would never have had it done without Maurice.’ ‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘Edmund has been out of the way of such things, but he consented, you know.’ Then as her eyes grew liquid, ‘A duck pond is a funny subject for sentiment, but oh! if you knew what that place has been to my imagination from the first, and how the wreaths of mist have wound themselves into spectres in my dreams, and stretched out white shrouds now for one, now for the other!’ and she shuddered. ‘And you have gone through all this and never spoken. No wonder your nerves and spirits were tried.’ ‘I did speak at first,’ said Albinia; ‘but I thought Edmund did not hear, or thought it nonsense, and so did I at times. But you see he did attend; he always does, you see, at the right time. It was only my impatience.’