' 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.'
'I suspect Maurice and John Smith had more to do with it,' said
Winifred.
'Well, we wont quarrel about that,' said Albinia. 'I only know that
whoever brought it about has taken the heaviest weight off my mind
that has been there yet.'
In truth, the terror, half real, half imaginary, had been a sorer
burthen than all the positive cares for those unruly children, or
their silent, melancholy father; and the relief told in all ways--
above all, in the peace with which she began to regard her child.
Still she would provoke Winifred by bestowing all her gratitude on
Mr. Kendal, who began to be persuaded that he had made an heroic
exertion.
Winifred had been somewhat scandalized by discovering Albinia's
deficiencies in the furniture development. She was too active and
stirring, and too fond of out-of-door occupation, to regard interior
decoration as one of the domestic graces, 'her nest was rather that
of the ostrich than the chaffinch,' as Winifred told her on the
discovery that her morning-room had been used for no other purpose
than as a deposit for all the books, wedding presents, lumber, etc.
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