Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/114

 Her eyes were red and swollen with crying, her grey and scanty hair had fallen about her collar, her old black blouse was unbuttoned at the top showing her bony neck and her thin crooked hands were trembling in the candle-light. Her eyes were large and frightened and her back was bent as though she was cowering from a blow. She had never taken very much notice of her nephew—of late she had been afraid of him; he was surprised now that she should come to speak to him.

“Peter,” she said in a whisper, looking back over her shoulder at the door.

“Yes,” he answered, staring at her.

“Oh, Peter!” she said again and began to cry—a whimpering noise and her hands shaking so that the candle rocked in its stick.

“Well,” he said more softly, “you'd better put that candle down.”

She put it on the table and then stood beside him, crying pitifully, jerking out little sentences—“I can't bear it I don't know what to do  I can't bear it.”

He got up from his chair and made her sit down on it and then he stood by her and waited until she should recover a little. He felt suddenly strangely tender towards her; she was his mother's sister, she had known his mother all her life and perhaps in her weak silly way she had loved her.

“No, aunt, don't cry It will be all right. I too am very unhappy. I have missed so much. If I had only known earlier—”

The poor woman flung little distracted glances at the old man asleep on the other side of the fire-place—

“Oh, dear, I had to come and talk to some one I was so frightened upstairs. Your father's there—with your mother. He sits looking at her and she was always so quiet and good and never did him any harm or indeed any one  and now he sits looking at her—but she's happy now—he will be coming downstairs at any moment and I am afraid of what he'll do if he sees me talking to you like this. But I feel as though I must talk a little it's so quiet.”

“It's all right, aunt. There's no one to be frightened