All the promise
of spring was there--dim, fragile, but sure, on this day of days,
this pearl that emerged from the darkness and the stress of winter,
iridescent with the tender colours of the dawning year.
They lunched in the open motor, Miss Baker again obligingly removing
herself to the box seat, and spreading rugs on the grass sat in the
sunshine, while Lady Ashbridge talked or silently watched Michael as he
smoked, but always with a smile. The one little note of sadness which
she had sounded when she said she was frightened lest everything should
break, had not rung again, and yet all day Michael heard it echoing
somewhere dimly behind the song of the wind and the birds, and the
shoots of growing trees. It lurked in the thickets, just eluding him,
and not presenting itself to his direct gaze; but he felt that he saw it
out of the corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at it. And
yet for weeks his mother had never seemed so well: the cloud had lifted
off her this morning, and, but for some vague presage of trouble that
somehow haunted his mind, refusing to be disentangled, he could have
believed that, after all, medical opinion might be at fault, and that,
instead of her passing more deeply into the shadows as he had been
warned was inevitable, she might at least maintain the level to which
she had returned to-day.
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