"I’m not eating too well, my dear, a bad sign, hey, a bad sign, and my sleep is broken—terribly broken. I never was one of the "fat kine" my love, but I’m growing noticeably thinner. I declare to you that Crombie, my man, is positively shocked at the falling off in my girth and Darbey, my tailor, poor fellow, is getting quite anxious about me."
Kathleen told herself that she ought to have known, ought to have anticipated it, yet she felt hurt that he took so little interest in her home. He never looked at anything; he sat down in a delightful Hepplewhite chair, a chair that the great Davenham had undertaken a seventy-five mile journey to secure. He sat down in the chair and stared at the very pointed toes of his exquisite boots.
"I’m not my own man, no, my love, I don’t wish to pain you, I know how sensitive you are, what a loving heart my child has; I don’t wish to rouse one anxiety in your mind, my love, but I feel age, old age creeping on."
Kathleen sat facing him, there was a set smile on her white lips. She heard him and did not realise one word that he was uttering, perhaps she had heard it all so often before that it was not worth listening to now.
"He is here, he is here. Here under this roof, here in this very room." The man who had written her those passionate love letters, letters which she had blistered with her tears, letters which she had destroyed at last with an aching heart and feelings of reverence and solemnity. How often, his voice calling to her, had come up out of the past, "Kathleen, I love you. Kathleen, come with me, risk all, give all, dare all, but come—come with me because I love you so."
And how nearly, how nearly she had said yes. Sometimes she wondered why she had not said yes, for it was in her heart to listen and to go—yet she had not, and now he was here.
Was she glad? No, no, no! Yet was she sorry? How could she answer, how could she tell?
"Darbey, of Dover Street, you remember, my love, my tailor, though Heaven knows I don’t patronise the poor fellow one half as much as he deserves. I tell you Darbey was shocked; he said to me, almost with tears in his eyes and his voice shaking with emotion, ’My lord,’ he said, ’I’m sorry to tell your lordship that your present measurements shew a falling off of two and a half inches at the waist, it’s a serious thing.’ He begged and besought me to consult a physician, but I did not. No, no, what does it matter after all? When I look about me and see your charming home—" he had not looked about him in the slightest degree, "then I realise that I have done what I could. I have seen to it that my child is—Don’t I hear voices, hey, Kathleen?"