"Poor little woman! What may she not have suffered in life, and how brave she seems!" were my last waking thoughts that night.
The Wynyards' return was after all delayed for a day or two, and this, as will be readily understood, I did not regret, as it gave more time for Moore's progress in convalescence. I had persuaded Mrs Bence and Sims, though not without some difficulty, to join me in keeping back the news of the accident from our hosts till we could tell it to them by word of mouth.
"It would only worry them," I said, "and do no conceivable good, and they are sure to come back the very first day possible."
And when they did arrive I felt doubly glad that I had taken this precaution, for Mr Wynyard was looking rather tired and depressed, and Isabel confided to me that the meeting his relative after an interval of a great many years had--as she expressed it--"taken it out of him" considerably, though the business matters which they had met to arrange had all been satisfactorily concluded.
Moore's misfortune did not strike them very seriously. Mr Wynyard never having had a son of his own, had an almost exaggerated idea of boys' spirits and love of adventure, and thought it very lucky indeed that Moore had got off with lesser injury than broken bones. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts just at that time, and once satisfied that everything had been done, and that my brother was in a fair way to a speedy recovery, allowed, so to say, the matter to drop, never even inquiring into the details of how it had happened, nor, rather to my surprise, did Isabel, though it was not till long afterwards that she confided to me the real grounds of her apparent lack of curiosity on the subject.
Both she and her father, however, were keenly interested, as indeed could not but have been the case, in my account of the visit I had received from the Misses Grey, and I felt again a peculiar gratitude to the kind-hearted ladies for the discretion and tact which had prevented a word, or even allusion, which I could not with perfect openness repeat to the Wynyards, as to this part of our experiences.
"They are really _very_ good," said Isabel heartily, when we were all talking it over together. "It is just the same kind way they behaved to the vicarage people, that time I told you of, several yours ago. Does it not make one wish, Regina, that anything could be done for these poor Greys towards removing the cloud that has hung over them for so long?"