Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/403

Rh his head bent in an attitude of weariness. She went over to him and put her arm about his shoulders. Brusquely he shook it off.

"Don't do that," he said sombrely.

"Bas ..."

His name died on her lips. She stood for some moments, looking dumbly at his head, at the gleam of the fire-light on his hair and his averted cheek, then turned and went out of the room.

That week Basil's father came out to spend a day. He had been ill, at his suburban home, for a month or more. Twice Teresa had been out there to see him, in a little house full of half-grown children and the odours of liberal German cooking. The Major seemed much more himself, away from that atmosphere. Yet he was greatly changed, physically, by his illness. His smart clothes hung upon a wasted figure, his cheeks had fallen in, and the old scar near his eye showed more distinctly against his present pallor. He was changed mentally, too. He talked about himself and his ailments, and the old wounds he had received in the war, which were troubling him again. His voice was querulous, and he moved feebly.

But he had all his habitual fondness for Teresa, and showed it. Several times he called her "Daughter"—the name was sweet to her. He brightened up to talk to Ronald, but a half-hour