Both the good old friends were very kind and full of tender
congratulation, mingled with a little anxiety, though they were
pleased with her good taste and simplicity and absence of all
elation. But then she had hardly realised the new position, and
seemed to look neither behind nor before. Her only scheme seemed to
be to take a house in London for a few months, and then perhaps to go
abroad, but of this she could not talk in those old scenes which
vividly brought back that castle in the air, never fulfilled, of a
holiday in Switzerland with Joe.
On leaving the Lucases, she sent her boys on before her to the
nearest bazaar, and was soon at her old home. Kind Mrs. Drake
effaced herself as much as possible, and let her roam about the house
alone, but furniture had altered every room, so that no responsive
chord was touched till she came to the study, which was little
changed. There she shut herself in and strove to recall the touch of
the hand that was gone, the sound of the voice that was still. She
stood, where she had been wont to stand over her husband, when he had
been busy at his table and she had run down with some inquiry, and
with a yearning ache of heart she clasped her hands, and almost
breathed out the words, "O Joe, Joe, dear father! Oh! for one moment
of you to tell me what to do, and how to keep true to the charge you
gave me—-your Magnum Bonum!"
So absolutely had she asked the question, that she waited, almost
expecting a reply, but there was no voice and none to answer her; and
she was turning away with a sickening sense of mockery at her own
folly in seeking the empty shrine whence the oracle of her life had
departed, when her eye fell on the engraving over the mantel-piece.
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