Carey did not fulfil her intentions of going into matters of business
with her brother-in-law that day, for little Armine, always delicate,
had been so much knocked up by his course of adventures, that he
needed her care all the rest of the day. Nor would she have been fit
for anything else, for when his aunt recommended a totally different
treatment for his ailments, she had no spirit to argue, but only
looked pale and determined, being too weary and dejected to produce
her arguments.

Jock was sufficiently tired to be quiescent in the nursery, where she
kept him with her, feeling, in his wistful eyes, and even in poor
little Armine's childish questions, something less like blank
desolation than her recent apathy had been, as if she were waking to
thrills of pain after the numbness of a blow.

Urged by a restless night and an instinctive longing for fresh air,
she took a long walk in the park before anyone came down the next
morning, with only Jock for her companion, and she came to the
breakfast table with a freshened look, though with a tremulous
faintness in her voice, and she let Janet continue tea maker,
scarcely seeming to hear or understand the casual remarks around her;
but afterwards she said in a resolute tone, "Robert, I am ready
whenever you wish to speak to me."

So in the drawing-room the Colonel, with the two wills in his hand,
found himself face to face with her. He was the more nervous of the
two, being, much afraid of upsetting that composure which scandalised
his wife, but which he preferred to tears; and as he believed her to
be a mere child in perception, he explained down to her supposed