He would dearly have loved to know, true; but, above all, he would dearly have loved to help.
"Eh, Dieu sait," he sighed, as the fly jingled and bumbled over the grass-grown avenue, "Dieu sait ce qui va se passer là-bas, maintenant que je n'y suis plus!"
He gave a lingering look at the twisted chimney-stacks against the pale sky, before setting his face for Paris, Ville Lumière, once more.
"She must not be hurried!--Until she asks for me; then," had resolved Harry English, "I will wait."
And at first, indeed, it seemed as if the waiting could not be hard. For with the young year had come new hopes to the Old Ancient House. And with Rosamond turning to life in her room upstairs under the gables, he who loved her could well afford to sit with patience below.
Yet time went by, and the summons came not.
Upon that first blessed morning, indeed, when after all these long days she had awakened at last, and looked upon the world with seeing eyes once more, Rosamond had whispered to Aspasia:
"Yes," came her eager answer. "Will you see him?"
Like a little Mercury, one foot poised, hand outstretched to grasp the happy moment, Aspasia stood ready to take flight upon her errand of comfort. But the pale woman in the bed shrank. The old shy withdrawal from the thought of emotion--as once from sorrow, now from joy--seemed to be upon her.
And, day by day, the singular little scene was re-enacted. In defiance of doctor's orders, Baby--with the sense of that other's hungry disappointment heavy upon her heart--would put her query ever more pleadingly:
"Will you not see him? Can you not see him? May it not be for to-day?"
But ever would come the same reply, while the lids sank over the timid eyes, and colour mounted slowly in the transparent face:
Then the woman would fall back into her secret dream, lying hours in that quietude at which her physician marvelled, while he welcomed its healing power. It was a pause in life. So the young mother may lie and hold her infant in her languid arms and be happy because of its very weakness and incompleteness; and deem it more safely her own that it has yet no speech for her, no will to meet hers, even no power of love with which to answer hers.
It is harder to be patient in happiness than in sorrow. These days of waiting began to tell upon Harry English more than all the years had done.
